Grand Rapids Business Journal 06.01.21

FURNITURE leaders speak on pandemic impact.

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JUNE 1, 2021 VOL. 39, NO. 11

The Business Newspaper of Metro Grand Rapids, Holland, Muskegon & West Michigan

Firm advises employers on return-to-office plans COLVIN MEETS Lockton Companies CHALLENGES consultant says employers should THIS WEEK

Rockford Construction electrician-turnedsuperintendent learned from many mentors along the way. Page 11

carefully mitigate interpersonal and health risks.

Rachel Watson

rwatson@grbj.com

Learning lessons GVSU joins national initiative to engage students to co-design education prototypes.

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Bright light The Green Panel opens its first showroom in Byron Center to tout virtues of solar energy.

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FAST START Mel Trotter Ministries launches public phase of $14.9M capital campaign.

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THE LISTS

The area’s top staffing firms Page 8 The area’s top payroll services firms Page 9

While many employees are celebrating the impending return of in-person work, their employers’ focus is on ensuring a smooth transition.

Jon Snead, senior vice president and business consultant at Lockton Companies’ Grand Rapids office, recently spoke to the Business Journal about the challenges of crafting a return-to-office strategy and shared advice Snead for employers

Start Garden graduates make their mark The entrepreneurial organization is sharing in the success it helped to create.

Danielle Nelson

dnelson@grbj.com

Start Garden has made its presence felt in this region’s business community ever since it was founded nine years ago by Rick DeVos. Now, some of those Start Garden “graduates” are making their

Many HR questions about employees returning to work center on vaccinations and workplace safety.

Photo by iStock

to ensure they are compliant with regulations and minimizing any potential risks.

Lockton is a global independent insurance brokerage. Snead, who was hired in January, has marks in West Michigan’s business community — and around the world.

The entrepreneurial ecosystem has invested financial, intellectual and social capital into hundreds of entrepreneurs by connecting them to resources critical to their growth-stage. Start Garden established competitions like 5x5 Night and 100 Ideas to benefit those who are looking to turn their ideas into the business they envision.

The 5x5 competition allows for up to five finalists to pitch their ideas in five minutes to five judges who then decide which idea wins.

The winners of the 5x5 competitions are awarded $5,000 to build on their idea.

Some of the individuals who have benefited from Start Garden’s 5x5 resources are Derik Lolli with Benefit Mobile, Jeff Courter with Sportsman Tracker, Jason Mejeur with MaxOne and Ben Harrison with Jonas Paul Eyewear.

Benefit Mobile was born out of Lolli’s experience with selling stacks of plastic gift cards to raise funds for his kids’ school. It mor-

extensive human resources and employee benefits experience, as well as a wealth of knowledge in many industries.

The firm was up to its elbows all year in discussions with clients

phed into an app-based platform to sell digital gift cards as fundraisers.

Benefit Mobile has since raised millions of dollars in investor

© Entire contents copyright 2021 by Gemini Media. All rights reserved.

Guest Columns.. 16 Essential lessons Change-Ups ..... 20

FAILURE LAB launches SHE training program for women.

Calendar .......... 20 Public Record .... 21 Street Talk ...... 23

CONTINUED ON PAGE 4

Start Garden has been involved with Sportsman Tracker since its inception. The digital platform provides hunters and anglers with information and resources on where and when the best time is to begin their outdoor sports. Courtesy Matt Read

GRBJ.COM Vol. 39, No. 11 $2.00 a copy. $59 a year

Inside Track ..... 10

and other peer industry players about their plans for returning to in-person work, whether in a phased/staggered approach, via a

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funds and, in 2018, merged with an industry-leading firm. At the end of 2020, it was sold to one of CONTINUED ON PAGE 11

HERE TO HELP MICHIGAN BUSINESSES THRIVE. No matter what stage your business is in, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation is here to help you succeed. By connecting you to the resources your business needs, granting access to necessary capital and introducing you to the right partners, the MEDC helps your business reach new potential.

Find out how we can help propel your business forward with customized support at michiganbusiness.org/pure-partnership

GRAND RAPIDS BUSINESS JOURNAL

JUNE 1, 2021

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Furniture leaders speak on pandemic impact Steelcase, Herman Miller and Haworth CEOs discuss sales channels, workplace trends, corporate responsibility.

Rachel Watson

rwatson@grbj.com

During a 15-month period with an unusual level of disruption, the West Michigan commercial furniture and design industry rebounded faster than expected, but according to three local CEOs, challenges remain.

The Economic Club of Grand Rapids on May 17 hosted a panel discussion, “Shaping the Workplace,” featuring Andi Owen, Franco Bianchi and Jim Keane, presidents and CEOs of Herman Miller, Haworth and Steelcase, respectively.

The trio Owen shared insights on workplace trends prior, during and post-pandemic; sales channels; and corporate responsibility, including environmental and social health and wellness.

Deirdre Jimenez, president and CEO of Grand Rapids-based Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturers Association

(BIFMA), moderated the discussion.

Jimenez noted in her opening remarks that “the pandemic paused projects, stalled commercial real estate transactions and slowed new product orders,” leading to softening revenue in the U.S. commercial furniture industry. However, while the financial impact of the pandemic for 2020 was originally forecast to be a 20% Bianchi decline, the year finished with a 13% decline.

“IHS (Markit) forecast that the furniture industry will slowly continue to rebound in 2021 and 2022, and signs are already pointing in the right direction,” she said.

“According to a recent Bloomberg report, office searches that had been postponed are reactivating, fueled by a pursuit for less expensive rates and more concessions from landlords who are eager to bring people back to their buildings. According to property data from (Design Trade Service), which tracks office tours, national demand for office space jumped 28% in March from the prior month Keane and is now just

The Steelcase Flex Collection is designed to support the in-person workforce while also offering options useful to hybrid and remote workers. Courtesy Steelcase

9% below pre-pandemic levels.”

Additionally, February architectural billing index data showed upticks in design contracts and billing for the first time since the pandemic, Jimenez said.

“These signals would indicate that companies are planning a return to the office, and with the CDC lifting guidelines, that shift will be happening sooner rather than later,” she said. “The amount of office space companies need may change, but with change often comes remodels, and with remodels often comes new furniture.”

For years before the pandemic, Jimenez said strategies gaining momentum included the open office and remote work, which evolved from being mobile within

one’s office through the creation of “neighborhoods” to being able to shift from working from home to working in the office through the use of “hoteling” stations in the workplace and performance seating at home.

When the pandemic hit, shelter-in-place restrictions forced the accelerated adoption of remote work, and people quickly discovered their non-ergonomic home furniture — sitting at the kitchen table or working in bed all day — wasn’t cutting it.

Owen said Herman Miller adapted to the increased demand for home office solutions by continuing its residential office catalog, upgrading its e-commerce delivery platforms, tailoring its lo-

gistics to deliver to individuals as well as businesses, and adding five U.S. retail stores and one in Tokyo.

She said it might sound counterintuitive to expand brick-and-mortar during a pandemic but sinking real estate prices made it a risk worth taking.

“Our strategy at Herman Miller is really the idea of meeting our customers wherever and everywhere that they are,” she said. “…

Our customers are very intentional, and they want and need advice from product specialists, especially in the home office category.”

She said the retail stores surpassed all sales expectations and led to a remarkably strong quarter CONTINUED ON PAGE 14

Failure Lab launches SHE training program for women GVSU joins national

Alternating quarterly cohorts will be geared toward female executives and high-performing, emerging leaders.

Rachel Watson

rwatson@grbj.com

An organization that was born from the idea of getting comfortable with failure is redesigning its training offerings at a time when the challenges for women in the workplace are at an unprecedented level.

Failure Lab, a global storytelling and corporate training organization that was founded in Grand Rapids a decade ago, next month will launch a virtual program called SHE, which it describes as “a life-shifting learning and support experience that no self-development book or ‘Boss Babe’ mug could ever provide.”

The organization has long offered general corporate training programs through a third-party facilitator, in addition to its live storytelling events, but when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, everything changed.

Anna Baeten, partner and COO of Failure Lab who is based in

Grand Rapids, was hired in July 2020 as the organization was grappling with the need to redesign and bring in-house its training offerings for a newly virtual world.

“We took the training side down to its studs and redesigned the content, redesigned pretty much everything about it. The main objectives through that redesign were a pretty in-depth analysis of what makes the event (side of Failure Lab) so compelling and trying to make sure that we were taking those elements of storytelling and communication and empathy and stress resilience and things like that and weaving Baeten them through the curriculum,” Baeten said. “And then the other thing, of course, was to just make it much more flexible as far as delivery, so it can be fully in-person, it can be fully virtual, or it can be some combination thereof.”

Failure Lab then hired Chrissy Heyne — who had just wrapped a 15-year career at Teach for America designing curriculum and developing diversity, equity and

inclusion initiatives — as Failure Lab’s director of corporate training. Heyne and Baeten have been working together to develop SHE. “(Chrissy) comes with that background and a real passion around management development and training in larger organizations, and so, as we were building out the general Failure Lab curriculum, the SHE programming was something that felt very natural for Chrissy and I to develop, because that’s the through-line of what we’ve done in our careers, is developing female leaders, leaders of color and managers in spaces where the representation isn’t super high, and so the SHE curricuHeyne lum in particular is really just Chrissy and I running with what we’re most passionate about,” Baeten said.

“I think it’s incredibly timely. It’s always time to talk about women in leadership and how women work in a world that’s built around patriarchal systems and that we don’t have a lot of the social supports that are necessary CONTINUED ON PAGE 21

effort to refine learning Schools will engage students to co-design education prototypes.

Danielle Nelson

dnelson@grbj.com

Grand Valley State University is partnering with five other universities and colleges nationally to give students the opportunity to find solutions to some of higher education’s most challenging problems through the launch of REP4, Rapid Education Prototyping for Change, Learners, Community, Equity.

Students from Amarillo College in Texas, Boise State University in Idaho, Fort Valley State University in Georgia, San José State University in California, Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania and GVSU, along with 30 regional high school partners and community members, will co-design education prototypes and the best ideas will be scaled nationwide through the alliance to maximize impact.

GVSU initiated its first prototype during a six-week Learner Engagement Challenge that was held last summer. It brought to-

gether 25 area high school students, along with GVSU students, to reimagine the future of learning.

Philomena V. Mantella, president of Grand Valley State University, said it was apparent early on that Grand Valley needed collaborators, such as those institutions, to help realize the vision of having students design their learning.

“The objective is simple: Accelerate innovation and at the same time allow thousands of learners a transformative experience where they embrace their power to set their course and have control of their own learning journey,” she said.

Some of the issues that schools are struggling with are low completion rates, lack of access and racial gaps.

According to the Association of American Colleges and Universities, citing a 2016 Pell Institute study, the country has struggled to close a persistent gap related to income and degree attainment.

From the study: among students in the bottom socioeconomic quartile, 15% had earned a bachelor’s degree within eight years of their expected high school graduation, CONTINUED ON PAGE 21

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GRAND RAPIDS BUSINESS JOURNAL

JUNE 1, 2021

Firm advises employers on return-to-office plans CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

hybrid remote/in-person plan, or some other target goal. In midMay, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer had just announced the all-clear for in-person office work to resume May 24, but Snead said most workplaces he is in touch with were already having these conversations with their employees.

“Employers, especially out of the human resource department, they have been constantly communicating with their employees throughout this year or year-plus of being remote on what their plans were,” Snead said. “… The employees have had questions throughout (the year) — ‘Are we ever coming back? When are we coming back? What will it look like?’ The human resource groups have done a really good job keeping employees informed throughout the process and obviously monitoring what is occurring both from the CDC, the Michigan health department (and) their county health department. So, when you ask the HR people about this added piece of their job, I think they would tell you that their communication to the employees has really been more focused and more frequent than pre-COVID.” While a sizeable portion of the West Michigan workforce — in industries such as health care and manufacturing — were deemed essential and coped with COVID-19 in person by implementing PPE, social distancing,

rearranged floor plans and other tactics, the office-based employers shifted to remote work early on but always knew they would be coming back at some point.

Snead said it’s clear most workplaces that shifted to remote work at the onset of COVID-19 will offer more flexibility and hybrid remote/in-person work options moving forward for those who want it.

But he said Lockton advises employers to be careful to create a culture where opportunities for engagement and innovation are consistently offered across the board, so as not to create rifts between employees who are offsite versus onsite.

“It’s (about) making sure that everybody has the same access to rewards and to opportunities going forward, no matter how often they are physically in the office,” he said. “It really comes down to making sure everybody has equal opportunities for everything despite whatever their work arrangement might be going forward.”

Vaccination risk management Snead noted the issue of vaccinations — who got them and who didn’t, and how to create an atmosphere of safety — is an important topic to address in any return-to-work plan.

Lockton recently published a national COVID-19 Vaccine Pulse Survey Report it compiled from a survey of 300 participants in February and March. The report

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found: •Almost 80% of companies plan to encourage employees to get a COVID-19 vaccine, but 3 of 4 have no plans to mandate.

•15% will ask their employees to provide proof of taking the vaccine, a much smaller percentage than those who plan to incentivize.

Lockton said employers can legally require employees to be vaccinated, although Snead believes many in West Michigan will not do so.

In a statement, Lockton’s HR compliance department said the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) does not prohibit employers from mandating the COVID-19 vaccination when the employer determines unvaccinated employees would pose a direct threat to others in the workplace. Specifically, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) said the administration of a COVID-19 vaccine to an employee by an employer, or by a third party with whom the employer contracts to administer a vaccine, is not a “medical examination” for purposes of the ADA because the employer is not seeking information about an individual’s impairments or current health status.

While the administration of the COVID-19 vaccination is not a medical examination, the prescreening vaccination questions may pose ADA violations, as the questions may elicit information about a disability.

If the employer administers the vaccine, it must show that such prescreening questions are “job-related and consistent with business necessity.” To meet this standard, an employer would need to have a reasonable belief, based on objective evidence, that an employee who does not answer the questions and, therefore, does not receive a vaccination, will pose a direct threat to the health or safety of themselves or others.

By contrast, Lockton said there are two circumstances in which disability-related screening questions can be asked without needing to satisfy the “job-related and consistent with business necessity” requirement. In the context of a mandatory vaccine policy, a simple solution is to have a third party with whom the employer does not have a contract — such as a pharmacy, other health care provider or local vaccination clinic — administer the vaccine so the employer is not the party asking the prescreening vaccination questions. Another way around the prescreening question is to have a vaccine policy that simply encourages employees to be vaccinated or offers an incentive to employees to become vaccinated. In that case, the employee’s decision to answer the prescreening, disability-related questions is voluntary. If the employee chooses not to answer the questions, the vaccine is not administered. The employer cannot retaliate against an employee for not being vaccinated in this situation.

If an employee maintains they cannot receive the vaccination

due to a medical condition, an employer should treat this as a request for an accommodation under the ADA and engage in the interactive process. The employer can obtain information about the employee’s medical condition to determine if the employee has a disability, then determine if a reasonable accommodation will eliminate or reduce the risk associated with working while unvaccinated that would not pose an undue hardship to the employer. Similarly, if an employee objects to the COVID-19 vaccination based on a sincerely held religious belief, this may be protected under Title VII. Again, the employer will need to determine whether the religious belief can be accommodated without an undue hardship to the employer.

Managers and supervisors responsible for communicating with employees about the employer’s vaccination requirement should know how to recognize an accommodation request from an employee and who to direct the employee to for further discussion. In the case of a potential accommodation, employers and employees need to work together to identify accommodation options. Determining how many other employees in the workplace who have already been vaccinated and the amount of contact the unvaccinated employee will potentially have with others whose vaccination status could be unknown may impact the undue hardship analysis, Lockton said.

Employers should remind managers and supervisors it is unlawful to disclose to others that an employee is receiving a reasonable accommodation or retaliate against an employee for seeking an accommodation.

If an employee cannot get vaccinated for COVID-19 because of a disability or sincerely held religious belief, and the employer concludes there is no reasonable accommodation, while it may be lawful for the employer to exclude the employee from the workplace, it does not mean the employer may automatically terminate the employee. Employers should proceed with caution and determine if any other federal, state or local laws afford the employee protection.

Legality of proof of vaccination Lockton’s compliance team said an employer can ask employees whether they are vaccinated but should not ask employees why they were not vaccinated, as that inquiry could elicit medical information protected by the ADA. If an employer requires its employees to provide proof they have received a COVID-19 vaccination from a pharmacy or their own health care provider, the employer should caution employees not to provide any medical information.

For employees who say they are not vaccinated, an employer can ask “Do you plan to get the vaccine when it is available to you?” If the answer to that question is “yes,” employers can ask, “When do you plan to get the vaccine? Within the next 30 days?

31 to 60 days? Within 90 days?”

Answers to these questions may help an employer prepare for remote employees to return to the work site, Lockton said.

Seeking common ground In collaboration with 30 other human resource leaders in the state, last year Lockton helped form the Michigan Talent & Culture Advisory Council to network and support each other on issues posed by COVID-19.

Amy McCulloch, strategic consultant, benefits and human capital at Lockton Companies Grand Rapids, attended the group’s May 11 virtual meeting.

“Many of the organizations with mostly remote workforces during the last 15 months stated they are working on a phased/ staggered approach to safely return employees back on to work campuses. Some are spanning return-to-office requirements out to Q4 2021, and others (have) more immediate plans of returning in early July,” she said, “while others working in trades or medical industries with the majority of their workforce (with the exception of their support staff ) working predominately onsite over the last 15 months, are working on plans for the support staff to return to work in some capacity either fully in person or hybrid.”

Snead said in many cases, real estate and floor plan layouts will dictate how long it takes to return to the office. Smaller companies may find it easier to physically distance workstations, and companies with 10,000 employees may need to obtain additional real estate.

McCulloch added: “Those with open workspaces are determining the cleaning rotation and ensure proper PPE requirements; they are also going to lengths to ensure cleaning crews to routinely clean and sanitize facilities throughout both the workday and at night to provide assurances of the facility cleanliness in all shared workspaces for their employees.”

One HR leader in the Michigan Talent & Culture Advisory Council said their organization was planning a “voluntary fun event” in the parking lot of their business for employees to come back together with their work colleagues to socialize and get reacclimated before in-person work resumes.

“The organizations requiring employees to return to work full time are aware they will have tough business decisions to make in the near future as they anticipate employees’ desires to continue working remotely,” McCulloch added.

Snead said HR departments already have proved they are on top of things. “(COVID-19) created a lot of opportunities for the human resources group departments in each of these organizations to really connect with the employees in a different way,” he said — and they rose to the challenge.

More information about Lockton Companies Michigan, including the Grand Rapids location, is at bit.ly/locktonmichigan.

GRAND RAPIDS BUSINESS JOURNAL

JUNE 1, 2021

5

Solar company opens first showroom in Michigan Facility gives customers a chance to see the products in action.

Ehren Wynder

ewynder@grbj.com

cuses on the brand specifically.

“Most people in the industry have never touched a solar panel in their life, and it is the third-largest expense a customer will make in their lifetime, behind purchasing their home or buying their vehicles,” Harris said.

As customers walk into the showroom, they are drawn to a pole-mount solar panel system.

Nine years ago, The Green Panel installed 18 poles — each with 16 panels — to power all the electric CONTINUED ON PAGE 11

Pole-mounted solar arrays inside the store help customers understand how the systems work. Courtesy Green Panel

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We make it our business to help you with yours.

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While The Green Panel has been engineering, furnishing and installing renewable energy systems for commercial and residential customers since 2007, the Brighton-based company only recently opened Michigan’s first solar showroom in Byron Center.

The purpose of opening a showroom for solar products was to make purchasing renewable energy products more of an experience like shopping in an Apple store and for The Green Panel to move away from in-home selling.

Adam Harris, owner and CEO of The Green Panel, said the company chose the location of its first showroom because of Grand Rapids’ aggressive renewable energy and zero carbon footprint platform.

“Most of the state is transforming into an aggressive zero-carbon platform,” Harris said. “Ann Arbor happens to be the No. 1 hotspot in the state right now … Grand Rapids is No. 2.”

The Green Panel began toying with the idea of opening a solar showroom about eight years ago, but the industry didn’t have enough traction at the time to make it feasible, Harris said. Renewable energy was still in its infancy and evolving in the business sector much more than in the residential arena.

At the time, solar installations for businesses were heavily incentivized by government institutions, but by 2012, many of those incentives were retracted.

There also was a lack of knowledge in the industry, Harris added.

From an educational standpoint, institutions that now teach about renewable energy and producing people to work in that space didn’t exist at that time.

“The No. 1 thing we seemed to go through with every client, whether they’re a large Fortune 500 business or a small business or a residential owner, is being able to understand how solar works,” Harris said. “There’s a lot of preconceived notions about how solar actually interfaces with your electrical system.”

The last nine years, however, were marked by explosive growth in renewable energy, and a need to continue to educate consumers about the science and the benefits of renewable energy. To date, The Green Panel alone has done about 1,500 solar installs in the state of Michigan — 60% residential and 40% commercial — so the company once again considered the idea of opening a showroom in 2020, until the pandemic hit.

Ironically, COVID-19 proved quite beneficial for the solar industry, as it created opportunities for business owners to think outside the box, and Harris said he believes solar is an out-of-the-box type of industry. Putting in a showroom would create a platform with no in-home selling, where the customer can come in, experience the product and ask questions without

feeling like they’re having their personal space invaded by a salesperson.

“If somebody comes to your house and sells to you — I hate to put it this way — there’s a sense of sliminess to it,” Harris said.

“And then when they’re there, you may get some biased information on the product they sell and why their product is better.”

By bringing potential customers into a showroom and presenting examples of how systems work, Harris said The Green Panel takes the bias out of selling and fo-

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JUNE 1, 2021

GRAND RAPIDS BUSINESS JOURNAL

Mel Trotter launches public phase of capital campaign $9.8M of $14.9M goal already has been raised behind the scenes to build new shelter and offer improved services.

Rachel Watson

rwatson@grbj.com

Mel Trotter Ministries is well on its way to improving how it addresses the city’s homelessness crisis.

Downtown Grand Rapids-based Mel Trotter Ministries hosted an event on May 14 announcing the public phase of the Immeasurably More campaign, a $14.9 million fundraising effort to fund the construction of a renovated shelter and make changes and improvements to its programs and services. It has been 54 years since any kind of significant renovation has occurred to the downtown mission’s physical properties.

Founded in 1900, Mel Trotter Ministries serves over 3,000 homeless guests each year — providing housing, meals, recovery programs, educational and job training, and spiritual counseling so local residents can break the

cycle of addiction, pursue permanent housing, gain employment and explore educational opportunities.

During the past two years, Mel Trotter merged with Heartside Ministries and Next Step of West Michigan to expand its services to homeless individuals in the region.

Launched in 2019, the Immeasurably More campaign raised more than $9.8 million in the past year, 66% of the campaign goal.

Over 240 community donors, local businesses and area foundations have supported the campaign, and now, the nonprofit is asking for additional support from the public.

Mel Trotter Ministries leaders plan to begin construction on the new shelter this summer, with anticipated completion by fall 2022, with Rockford Construction serving as the project’s contractor and Craig Architects as the architectural firm.

The current 113-bed men’s shelter is a crowded, open plan dorm that has no privacy. The women’s shelter, which houses children and families, is overflowing. Mel Trotter said the new shelter will provide “increased dignity, health and safety” with its new design, including quad rooms and air filtration systems.

At the public announcement of the fund drive, Bob Worthington, Janis Petrini, Anedra Eatman and Michael Faas, the campaign co-chairs, invited the community to join in the fundraising effort, which will continue through the winter.

“As we work to help the homeless (individuals and families) of our community, I am pleased to be part of an effort that reaches out to help our community’s most vulnerable. Mel Trotter is a beacon of hope during tough times,” Worthington said. “Homelessness is a growing problem nationally, and it’s the same here in West Michigan. And this happens for a lot of reasons: job loss, medical diagnosis, addiction, foreclosure, generational poverty, you name it — and that was before the pandemic. COVID has just complicated things that much more. If it wasn’t for Mel Trotter and our community partners opening the temporary shelter at 250 Ionia, we would have had 30 people every night not being able to get into the shelter.

“So as a result of all this, the board of directors of Mel Trotter Ministries has made the goal of raising $15 million to accomplish three things. The first thing we’re going to do is renovate our men’s shelter. … The second thing we’re going to do is provide more job training programs that reflect the current job market. And then finally, the third thing is to provide more transitional houses to our guests as they move into normal lives.”

Dennis Van Kampen, president and CEO of Mel Trotter, said when he started working at the nonprofit nine years ago, a guest of

Founded in 1900, Mel Trotter serves more than 3,000 homeless guests each year. It has been 54 years since any significant renovations have occurred at the downtown facilities. Courtesy Mel Trotter

Mel Trotter could get a job and a decent apartment on the bus line for $700 or $800 per month. Today, those same apartments cost $1,500 to $1,600, while wages haven’t risen much, if at all.

“We decided to stop complaining about it and start partnering with people and doing something about it, so we now own several houses, and this campaign will more than quadruple the (number) of houses that we have to get people out of a shelter as quickly as possible and into housing,” he said.

Eatman said at the event the campaign has received support from local and regional founda-

tions, area businesses and community donors.

“We have been so fortunate to receive gifts to this important campaign. My fellow chairs and our campaign cabinet join me in thanking the community for their meaningful gifts. We now invite the broader community to help us complete this campaign effort. We welcome gifts of all sizes,” Eatman said.

She noted the co-chairs are not just working behind the scenes; they also have given of their resources toward the fundraising goal because they believe in Mel CONTINUED ON PAGE 14

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GRAND RAPIDS BUSINESS JOURNAL

JUNE 1, 2021

THE LIST

Top Area Staffing Firms (RANKED BY 2020 WEST MICHIGAN REVENUE)

Top local executive(s)

Year established in W. Mich.

2020 2019 W. Mich. revenue

No. of W. Mich.

No. of W. locations/ Mich. recruiting placements in staff 2020 Specialization and services offered

Women in staffing Employee benefits

1

Workbox Staffing LLC 1350 Scribner Ave. NW Grand Rapids 49504 p (616) 242-9919 workboxstaffing.com

Brian Paavola

1997

$40M $47.47M

8 35

7,500

Industrial staffing, manufacturing staffing, warehouse staffing, fulfillment staffing, office staffing, background checks, employment verification, employee scheduling

Health, dental, direct deposit, 401(k) matching disability, training, paid vacation

2

Elwood Staffing 2915 Breton Road SE Grand Rapids 49512 p (616) 698-7979 f 698-0838 elwoodstaffing.com

Denise Cook

1981

$6.55M $9.29M

2 9

1,254

Administrative, industrial, logistics and professional

Medical, dental, vision, holiday pay, life insurance

3

Trillium Staffing Solutions 5555 Gull Road Kalamazoo 49048 p (866) 512-1750 trilliumstaffing.com

Yvette Serrato

1984

$5.87M $922,349

3 8

638

Professional, construction, drivers, environmental, administrative, skilled trades, manufacturing, on-site management, loss control, HR services

Holiday and vacation pay, health insurance, 401(k), medical, dental, life insurance, direct deposit

4

HR Collaborative 678 Front Ave. NW, Suite 190 Grand Rapids 49504 p (616) 965-7860 hrcollaborative.com

Beth Kelly

2013

$2.38M $2.15M

1 4

96

Permanent placements for professional, HR, administrative, nonprofit and executive roles.

Interim placement for HR roles

Extensive benefit offerings; certified as a 2020 Great Place to Work by the GPTW Institute

5

Management Business Solutions 2935 Buchanan Ave. SW Wyoming 49548 p (616) 456-5627 mgmtbsolutions.com

Floriza Genautis Amy Marshall

2006

$1M DND

1 8

DND

Temp to hire, contingency placement, executive recruitment, and retainer solutions for supervisory and management roles up to the CSuite

None

Fettig 265 Leonard St. NW Grand Rapids 49504 p (616) 975-3011 f 949-9480 fettig.jobs/employers

Mike Fettig

2007

DND DND

3 26

5,890

Light industrial, manufacturing, warehouse, administrative and professional staffing for trialhire and direct-hire opportunities

Medical, dental, vision, life insurance, short-term disability, weekly pay, direct deposit, rapid pay card, paid training, referral bonus, PPE

Express Employment Professionals 1760 44th St. SW, Suite 10 Grand Rapids 49519 p (616) 281-0611 f 281-1737 expresspros.com/grandrapidsmi

Janis Petrini

1996

DND DND

1 30

2,346

Staffing and recruiting for light industrial, administrative, advanced manufacturing and professional positions; leadership training and HR services

Health, dental, vision, life insurance, disability, holiday, vacation, 401(k), direct deposit, scholarships

Hire For Hope 49 Monroe Center St. NW, Suite 200 Grand Rapids 49503 p (616) 881-3309 hireforhope.com

Ashley Ward

2017

DND DND

1 7

DND

Professional recruiting, executive search, behavioral and cognitive assessment tools, talent strategy consulting

Benefits stipend, unlimited vacation, team happy hours, laptop, cell, professional development allowance, focus on philanthropy

Imperial Design Companies 1958 Wilson Ave. SW Grand Rapids 49534 p (616) 791-1900 f 791-0742 imperialdesign.com

Rex Baker Tom Mathews

1980

DND $14M

2 5

DND

Engineering and skilled trades, direct and contract placements

Medical, dental, vacation and holiday pay, 401(k), disability

Judson Group 1059 Wealthy St. SE, Suite 201 Grand Rapids 49506 p (616) 336-8484 f 336-8484 judson-group.com

Hunter Judson Hunter Judson, Jr.

2002

DND DND

1 9

DND

Wealth management, financial services, banking, industry research, contingency and retained search

Medical, dental, vision, life insurance, 401(k), FSA, PTO, direct deposit

Peoplemark Inc. 3949 Sparks Drive SE, Suite 110 Grand Rapids 49548 p (616) 245-6161 f 245-6262 aus.com/staffing-services

Shelby McGuire

DND

DND DND

1 DND

DND

Light industrial and clerical

DND

Brad Rowe

2015

DND DND

DND 1

DND

Insurance recruitment specialists

DND

Summer Vasquez

1994

DND DND

1 5

DND

Direct hire, temporary-to-hire, clerical, industrial, engineering, HR, accounting, call center, skilled trades

Health insurance, direct deposit, global cash card, vacation pay, cell phone discount

The Murphius Group P.O. Box 150774 Grand Rapids 49515 p (616) 204-3170 themurphiusgroup.com Williamson Employment Services Inc. 3940 Broadmoor Ave. SE, Suite 101 Kentwood 49512 p (616) 575-5627 f 575-5628 williamsonemployment.com

Diane Bohman, senior VP of MSP Solutions of Elwood Staffing, was selected by Staffing Industry Analysts for its Global Power 150 – Women in Staffing list for 2020.

Expanding services HR Collaborative is expanding its services to Metro Detroit.

Two awards

The Grand Rapids Business Journal list of top area staffing firms, ranked by 2020 West Michigan revenue, is the most comprehensive available. The list is based on responses to Business Journal surveys. The Business Journal defines "West Michigan" as Allegan, Kent, Ottawa and Muskegon counties. The Business Journal surveyed 99 agencies; 13 returned surveys and 13 are listed. To be considered for future lists, email dnelson@grbj.com. DND = Did not disclose

Express Employment Professionals was recognized by ClearlyRated with the Best of Staffing Client and Talent Awards.

Free services In March, Arrow Staffing began offering free resume building, mock interviews and job skills training.

ListStore

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The Book of Lists and other lists are also available.

GRAND RAPIDS BUSINESS JOURNAL

THE LIST

JUNE 1, 2021

9

Employers face challenges to pick up where they left off With so many workers on the sidelines, incentives are becoming more prevalent.

Danielle Nelson

dnelson@grbj.com

As more and more employers reopen their workplaces after the pandemic forced them to make adjustments, they are missing one thing: employees.

David Robb, director of operations for Express Employment Professionals, said right now is the slowest time he has ever seen for applications and job-seeking activity.

“That is not just what we see at Express Employment Professionals, but it is also what we hear from clients and what we see across the board with the different analytics we monitor on job boards and things like that,” Robb said. “Even pre-COVID, we had a very tight labor market in West Michigan and had unemployment around 3%, but it is more challenging right now to recruit people who were employed pre-pandemic.”

At the height of the pandemic, the unemployment rate rose from around 3% to 23.6% in April 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate dropped

to 8.5% in August and hovered come off of unemployment, mayaround 8% until January, when it be because of extra federal mondeclined to 5.7%. The latest pre- ey, as well as some people still liminary unemployment rate in have safety concerns, so those are the people that it is difficult the state is 5.1%.

Grand Rapids-Wyoming’s un- for them to come back to the employment rate in March was workforce.

“Another factor that we see 4.7%, per the latest preliminary U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics making a big impact is that a data. The unemployment rate lot of people have left the labor reached its highest during the force. Looking at the stats, close pandemic in April 2020, when it to around 30,000 people in the peaked at 21%. Since August, the Grand Rapids area are no lonregion has been recovering much ger in the labor force compared faster than the state and the na- to last year, meaning they aren’t tion as the unemployment rate currently working, they are not on unemployment benefits and loally ranged from 5.9% to 4.7%.

Robb credits West Michigan’s they are not looking for work,” manufacturing industry for keep- Robb said. “They just left the labor force and ing the region’s are sitting on unemployment Robb credits the sideline, so lower than the West Michigan’s there are just state and nation because it varies manufacturing industry less workers work with in services such for keeping the region’s to than a year as automotive, unemployment lower ago, which medical, food has caused a and agriculture. than the state and strong hiring Despite the nation because it varies demand.” drop, most emRobb said ployers in West in services such as some people Michigan are automotive, medical, have left the searching for food and agriculture. labor force their next embecause they ployee.

Robb points to numerous factors that were close to retirement, so they have resulted in fewer individ- decided to stop working, but he uals entering the job market in said what they’ve also noticed is search for jobs as the U.S. begins that there is a huge difference in the gender participation statisto open its economy. “(Some reasons) are people tics in the labor force.

“There are less women in are receiving unemployment benefits and it is hard for them to the workplace and in the labor

market,” he said. “A lot of it has to do with child care issues over the last year — schooling changes. Virtual schooling definitely impacted women a lot, so they have left the workforce for various reasons and haven’t returned yet.”

In an effort to get people back in the workplace, many companies are offering various new incentives to lure people back to work.

“Companies are getting more creative than they have ever been before, to be honest,” he said. “The first thing that we’ve seen is wages going up quite a bit, so there has really been significant compensation, especially for industrial positions, (and) more entry level positions.

We have seen entry-level wages increase 10% to 20% over the last year.

“It is really significant as employers try to compete. We are seeing other things like retention bonuses so maybe you get a $500 bonus or $1,000 bonus after 90 days or six months,” he said. “We are seeing things like attendance bonuses as well. There is just a lot of different things companies are trying to do right now.

Robb said companies are hiring in multiple categories such as human resources, IT and administrative support.

“It is kind of across the board.

One of the areas that was the slowest for a long time was more administrative office positions

David Robb estimates approximately 30,000 people have left the labor force in West Michigan over the past year. Courtesy Nic Dampier

like clerical positions,” he said.

“Those are really starting to see a resurgence now as more and more employers are going back to the office because they will need that office support again.”

Top Area Payroll Services Firms (RANKED BY 2020 WEST MICHIGAN REVENUE EXCLUSIVELY FROM PAYROLL SERVICES)

Company

2020 2019 Year established W. Mich. revenue from Top local executive in W. Mich. payroll services

Software Charge for installation & customized reports/ No. of W. updates/ online reports Mich. clients HR package available anytime Payroll products & services

40 Under 40 Additional services offered

1

Beene Garter LLP 56 Grandville Ave. SW, Suite 100 Grand Rapids 49503 p (616) 235-5200 f 235-5285 beenegarter.com

Thomas Rosenbach Josh Garvey

1949

$2.56M $2.34M

DND

Y Y

N Y

Cloud-based payroll, time and attendance tracking, benefit elections and open enrollment, tax filing and compliance

Tax planning and preparation, accounting outsourcing services, audits and retirement plan services

2

Mercantile Bank of Michigan/MercForce Robert B. Kaminski 5610 Byron Center Ave. SW Wyoming 49519 p (616) 406-3600 f 406-3737 mercforce.com

2001

$1.75M $1.63M

325

Y Y

Y Y

Human capital management including applicant tracking, onboarding, payroll, taxes, benefits, ACA, human resources, time and attendance, and reporting

Payroll cards, HSAs, labor law posters, background checks, drug screening, benefit carrier connectivity, APIs and Secure FTP transmissions

BASIC Payroll P.O. Box 9340 Wyoming 49509 p (616) 261-2201 f 261-0701 basiconline.com

Jim Bolek

1989

DND DND

DND

Y Y

N Y

HCM, timekeeping, custom FSA, HRA, HSA, COBRA reports, automatic transfers, and FMLA administration; electronic tax filings, direct ACA and ERISA compliance deposit, same-day processing management

Jud Highhill

1970

DND DND

750

Y Y

N Y

Cloud-based payroll, timekeeping, guaranteed automatic tax filing, new hire reporting, same-day processing, geofencing, instant pay

HR management, time off, onboarding, applicant tracking, compliance, performance reviews, benefits, employee selfservice

Dominion Systems, Inc. 401 Hall St. SW Grand Rapids, MI 49503 p (616) 248-3835 dominionsystems.com Paylocity DND Grand Rapids DND p (616) 414-2127 paylocity.com

Aaron Alsgaard Ryan Ruiz

2007

DND DND

DND

Y Y

N Y

Payroll, HR, time and labor, BenAdmin, applicant tracking, learning management, mobile application

On-boarding, employee self service, peer recognition and employee engagement community, analytics and reports, talent management

Timmer Accounting & Tax Service LLC 14726 Riley St. Holland 49424 p (616) 399-1940 f 399-9841 timmeraccounting.com

Duane Timmer

2006

DND DND

15

Y Y

Y N

Direct deposit, online filing

Bookkeeping, accounting, taxes and reviews

The Grand Rapids Business Journal list of top area payroll services firms, ranked by 2020 West Michigan revenue exclusively from payroll services, is the most comprehensive available. The list is based upon responses to Business Journal surveys. The Business Journal defines "West Michigan" as Allegan, Kent, Ottawa and Muskegon counties. The Business Journal surveyed 34 companies; 6 returned surveys and 6 companies are listed. To be considered for future lists, email dnelson@grbj.com. DND = Did not disclose

Beene Garter’s Sarah Vlasblom, CPA, CCIFP, is one of two Michigan-based construction financial professionals chosen for the Construction Financial Management Association’s 40 Under 40 program.

20 Under 40 Mercantile Bank of Michigan’s Brad Schalk was named to the Midland Daily News 20 Under 40 list.

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The Book of Lists and other lists are also available.

10

GRAND RAPIDS BUSINESS JOURNAL

JUNE 1, 2021

Colvin won’t back down from a challenge

INSIDE TRACK

George Colvin lists reconstruction of Houseman Field as one of his most difficult projects. Courtesy Rockford Construction

Rockford Construction electricianturned-superintendent learned from many mentors along the way.

Ehren Wynder

ewynder@grbj.com

If

someone gave George Colvin a simple straightforward project, he would get bored very quickly.

Now a senior project superintendent for Rockford Construction, Colvin worked his way up in the company for nearly two decades by never backing down from a challenge.

Colvin said he was originally inspired to get into construction by his uncle, who owned a successful commercial electrical company in Grand Rapids. At the same time, the young Colvin was working at a factory while taking night classes at Grand Rapids Community College for electrical trades.

“Seeing how he was successful and how he was able to establish himself in life motivated me to be an electrician,” Colvin said “When I wanted to become an electrician, I already learned some hard lessons as far as hiring family (laughs). He said, ‘I’m not going to hire family, but I will tell you what steps to take.’”

Colvin’s first job as an electrician was with Circuit Electric. At the time, he had no aspirations to be a leader in the field, he said, but the jump from tradesperson to superintendent is not unheard of in the industry.

“Some of our best superintendents actually come from the field and the trades,” Colvin said. “You know how to read blueprints, you understand construction.”

When on a project for East Kentwood High School’s football stadium, Colvin met the project superintendent for Triangle Construction, the project’s general contractor. He said he was impressed by the manner in which the superintendent controlled the project and maintained the schedule.

“Back then we used to call superintendents ‘generals,’” Colvin said. “With the title of a general, you assume leadership … I was pretty impressed that one person had all that in his mind.”

By coincidence, a friend of Colvin’s who was recruiting for Rockford Construction gave him a call and asked him if he was interested in being a superinten-

dent. Colvin said he wasn’t quite sure and was happy still being an electrician. He developed a pretty strong reputation as an electrician and felt secure working for Circuit Electric.

“It’s just hard work ethic, I guess,” Colvin said. “I’m just driven to be the best at what I do.

I never wanted to feel as if there was something I couldn’t do. If there was ever a problem, I wanted to conquer it. If there’s something about my job that I hate doing, I find ways to love it, just to better myself.”

Colvin approached his boss at Circuit Electric and told him he wasn’t sure if he wanted to make the jump to superintendent, but his boss encouraged him to check it out and said he would always have a home a Circuit Electric.

“That gave me, I guess, the bravado to even take the shot at it,” he said.

Colvin got his feet wet doing some smaller projects for Rockford, but his first major project with his new employer was as an assistant superintendent for the construction of a new Meijer store in Illinois.

“On a project that size, that moves that fast, you must sink or swim,” Colvin said. “I had to learn a lot of things on the fly and develop my managing style. I learned a lot on that project. Fortunately, I didn’t make a ton of mistakes (laughs).”

A good superintendent has to have the ability to recognize different characteristics in each person tied to the project, Colvin said. Once can’t deal with every foreman the same way, for example.

Early in his career, Colvin would react to tense situations with the same energy, which he realized wasn’t helpful.

“You’ve got to learn to communicate with the guys. You’ve got to understand their psychology, recognize what’s important to them, and you’ve got to recognize that you don’t know everything about everything. You’re going to learn from everyone,” he said.

“You’ve got to empower the people who work under you, and you can actually become a pretty efficient superintendent.”

Additionally, having experience in the field enabled Colvin

GEORGE COLVIN Organization: Rockford Construction Position: Senior Superintendent Age: 48 Birthplace: Grand Rapids Residence: Troy Biggest career break: Houseman Field reconstruction project

to determine whether someone was making excuses for why something couldn’t be done according to the project specifications or couldn’t be completed on schedule, he said.

“If it was a legitimate reason, I was able to understand that, because I did come from the field,” he said.

Colvin worked his way through Rockford’s ranks for 16 years, leading a myriad of high-profile projects like Grand Rapids Public Schools’ Housman Field, Davenport University’s College of Business and even Rockford’s own headquarters. He attributed much his rise through the company to having great mentors.

“Rockford was wise enough to put me with people who can help me grow my career and patient enough to understand that I needed to learn as I was growing, which is how they pretty much structure it,” Colvin said.

Again, Colvin applied the same principles he had as an electrician: not wanting anyone to work harder than him and not wanting to feel like there was anything he couldn’t do. He said he wasn’t afraid to ask questions or take on responsibility, and he was confident that there was not a project he couldn’t deliver on time, under budget and with high quality.

“Those were the three things.

If anybody could build it, I felt like I could build it. I just need to dig into it and understand it,” Colvin said.

Much of Colvin’s experience is in the K-12 and higher education sector of construction, but

he said he was open to building anything. On a project for Grand Rapids Christian Schools, Colvin worked under a superintendent, Chris Meek, who he said helped shape him for the rest of his career.

“The way Rockford is structured, once you get into one market, and you do well, and it gets on your resume, and there’s other opportunities in that market, they try to present you, because you have experience building in that market, but I don’t think there’s a project I’m afraid to build,” Colvin said.

should have been (laughs), I go in and I said, ‘Yeah, no problem.

I can get it done, and here’s how I can do it,’” Colvin said.

The Houseman Field project also ran into difficulties when Colvin’s team discovered a buried school and a buried road on site, but Colvin’s team ended up fast-tracking the project and completing it in five-and-a-half months and under budget.

The $5.2-million renovation featured the installation of an artificial turf playing field, renovations to the locker rooms, concession stands, new press box, track/

“It’s just hard work ethic, I guess. I’m just driven to be the best at what I do. I never wanted to feel as if there was something I couldn’t do. If there was ever a problem, I wanted to conquer it. If there’s something about my job that I hate doing, I find ways to love it, just to better myself.”

George Colvin Probably Colvin’s most challenging project was the reconstruction Houseman Field for GRPS, because of schedule and budget constraints, he said.

Houseman Field was originally donated to the GRPS Board of Education in 1907, but the facility was in need of renovation before the 2009 football season. Rockford was one of three firms that bid on the project, and every other construction firm told GRPS it would have to schedule its first three home games away, because there was no way it could be built in six months.

“Me, not being as wise as I

field event surfaces and bleacher repairs. The project also won the People’s Choice Award from the Grand Rapids Neighborhood Business Alliance.

“I like when it’s a tough project, and all my peers and everyone around me understands that … where they don’t have any idea how to get it done within the schedule constraints, and I deliver on it,” Colvin said. “I think that speaks volumes for what I can do as a superintendent.”

GRAND RAPIDS BUSINESS JOURNAL

JUNE 1, 2021

Start Garden graduates make their mark CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

the largest firms in the gift card industry.

“It’s every entrepreneur’s dream to build a business that is considered successful both to its investors and community,” said Lolli, founder and CEO of Benefit Mobile. “I’m forever grateful to Start Garden for believing in Benefit and dedicating not only dollars but also a much-needed network, guidance and advice throughout our nine-year journey.

With their help we were able to contribute millions of dollars to local schools and nonprofits while also leading to an exciting exit for our team. We look forward to seeing the future impacts under new ownership.”

The acquisition price for Benefit Mobile is confidential, per the terms of the transaction agreement, but it is significant.

“The initial investment in Benefit Mobile resulted in us securing a small piece of business ownership – low single digits if we’re talking a percentage,” said Paul Moore, director of Start Garden.

“But its success more than covered the roughly 300 small $5,000 and $20,000 investments that we made to build an entrepreneurial culture from which Derek grew. And while it’s great that we covered our cost, the biggest win is that we spurred hundreds of entrepreneurs to act and give their ideas a shot.”

Courter is the co-founder of Sportsman Tracker, which is a digital platform that provides hunters and fishermen with information and resources on where and when the best time is to begin their outdoor sports. The company’s flagship app is called HuntWise.

“Start Garden was really a part of the initial forming of our business from day one,” Courter said.

“I developed an idea and around that same time that I had the initial hypothesis into what we were doing, they were having their 5x5 Night. We brought that concept to that and we had our first success

there. They gave us the $5,000 and then later $20,000. We incorporated in 2015, but they invested in us prior to that so they helped us from the very beginning.”

In addition to money, Courter said Start Garden provided them a space to work out of at 40 Pearl St. in Grand Rapids as they began to emerge as a company. The nonprofit also surrounded them with people who are knowledgeable about entrepreneurship and some of those individuals are currently team members at Sportsman Tracker.

“When you start as a founder, you don’t know what you don’t know, so they helped to foster our growth by surrounding us with people who helped us get to where we are now,” he said.

In 2020, the company launched HuntCast 2.0, which is a mapping technology to cover public and private land boundaries for all 50 states to go hunting, unlock 3D mapping options and provide over 350 state and federal map overlays.

The app also features downloadable options such as offline maps, peak movement times for over a dozen North American species, and hunting land-owner parcel and contact information.

In 2018, Start Garden revealed a new initiative called 100 Ideas where individuals can submit 100-second videos of themselves pitching their idea. There were 812 individuals who participated in the competition in 2018. One hundred people were selected, and they received $1,000 to invest in their ideas.

Those 100 individuals returned for a Demo Day event to make the case for why they should be among 10 chosen for another $20,000.

Later, 10 people are chosen to win $20,000.

The competition was held in 2018 and 2019. It was interrupted in 2020 because of the pandemic, but this year the competition has returned, and individuals can submit their ideas until July 26.

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Solar company opens first showroom in Michigan CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5

vehicles on Western Michigan University’s campus.

The Green Panel also is a supplier for Tesla, which aside from manufacturing EVs and EV charging stations, also develops traditional solar panels, less conspicuous “solar shingles” for homes and energy storage devices for overproduction.

Solar arrays on their own rely on utility power at night or when solar energy isn’t available due to weather and other variables. With a battery backup system, energy can be stored for future use, reducing or eliminating the need to utilize any amount of solar energy.

“Any overproduction that that solar array produces goes back in the battery,” Harris said. “So, when you get home in the evening,

you can interrogate this battery through your cell phone and say, ‘I want to use the power from the battery before I go to the grid.’”

An individual Tesla storage device has a 13 kWh output, and users can stack units together for more output. The output will continue even in a power outage.

Tesla’s solar shingles are a viable alternative to a traditional roofing system in communities where zoning does not allow for residents to put solar panels on the front of their houses, Harris added.

The Green Panel also carries the SunPower array of products, which are mostly used in commercial applications. At press time, The Green Panel was installing a half-megawatt SunPower array for the Auto Owners building in Lansing.

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JUNE 9

12 P.M. EST

GRAND RAPIDS BUSINESS JOURNAL

JUNE 1, 2021

13

Tech firm puts remote businesses on better networks VanBelkum’s 60 years of experience comes into play during pandemic.

Ehren Wynder

ewynder@grbj.com

As COVID-19-related shutdowns force businesses to pivot toward remote work, the kind of network they are running on becomes a critical — but often overlooked — component of the switch.

Shifting to remote or hybrid work doesn’t start with adding e-commerce and delivery, or even routing incoming calls to employees’ cell phones, but rather it all starts with the network on which companies are running.

Enter VanBelkum, a Grand Rapids-based technology company with a unique approach to shifting toward remote work.

“We can take the devices on your network — say, your phones or other low-security devices — and actually segment each thing based on their function. It’s just creating different roads for each set of traffic … now those things can’t communicate with each other, so if you had a fish tank thermometer on your network that was easy to hack, you can’t get in through that to hack some other device on the network.”

Dallas VanBelkum “We really wanted to deliver applications — let’s say a working phone — to our clients over the last number of years,” owner Todd VanBelkum said. “What we found was they had terrible networks, so the phone quality was bad … what happens is it’s kind of an afterthought — the appli-

cations don’t work. Now troubleshoot and try to help us figure out how to make this work.”

VanBelkum was founded in 1959 by Nick VanBelkum as a dictating machine sales and service organization. His son and current owner of the company, Todd VanBelkum, said his father got into the business at the tail end of the days when voice recording technology was just a wax cylinder.

Over the years, VanBelkum saw radical shifts in communication technology and applications – including voice recording for doctors and attorneys, cassette tapes and compact discs – and VanBelkum continued to evolve and develop new solutions for clients. When Todd VanBelkum joined the company in the ’80s, the company had shifted to phone communications.

Traditionally, VanBelkum has been synonymous with technology, data, phones, video surveillance and more, but recently, the company has focused less on any specific technology and more on taking an existing business practice and moving it to an all-virtual or hybrid world.

“It’s hard to put it into, like, three words,” Todd VanBelkum said. “We’ve got a bit of history.”

Over 60 years later, VanBelkum is still a family operation, with Todd’s son, Dallas VanBelkum, on board for the past couple of years on the physical infrastructure side.

“I’ve just been pushing more on-site install and design — trying to get our name out there before construction starts, instead of coming in last-minute, like IT normally is,” Dallas VanBelkum said.

VanBelkum now has a team of five installers working those larger infrastructure jobs, including cabling, cameras, access control and more.

“In Ada, for instance — bunch of new construction in Ada — they get put up, and there’s no conduit to get to multiple internet providers,” Todd VanBelkum added. “If I’m a business, I can’t just have one internet provider, I have to have a secondary … now after the fact, they’re punching holes in the building to try to get

Dallas VanBelkum, shown here installing cabling, said effective networks “create different roads for each set of traffic.” Courtesy VanBelkum

the internet provider into the building. If we’re engaged early, we can engineer all of that.”

To simplify, a network is broken down into five parts. Todd VanBelkum said when people typically think of a network, they only think about the WiFi. While WiFi is part of the network, the other parts include the wiring, the internet service provider (ISP), wireless and electronics like switches and firewalls.

“If any one of those is not working properly, your application could be affected, and you can’t make a phone call or be on a video conference — whatever’s mission critical,” Todd VanBelkum said. “You can’t take pizza orders!”

When it comes to remote work, many times individuals have a poor network at home as well, Dallas VanBelkum said.

“With internet provider modem, all of their devices, like phones, they can bring home and plug in,” Dallas VanBelkum said.

“We can do VPN (virtual private network) connections to the main network of the company.”

Todd VanBelkum said the company’s approach is not to sell

State aligns hemp guidelines with federal standards Growers have longer harvest window and revamped registration cycle.

Danielle Nelson

dnelson@grbj.com

Updates to Michigan’s Industrial Hemp Growers Act are giving hemp farmers and growers more latitude to expand.

The state’s hemp program is now aligned with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Domestic Hemp Produc-

tion program. The change should allow for more opportunity in the hemp industry.

The updates to Michigan’s Industrial Hemp Growers Act allow farmers to have 15 additional days for harvest, increasing the harvest window to 30 days.

The registration cycle for growers now is Feb. 1-Jan. 31 instead of Dec. 1-Nov. 30. However, registrations issued to growers for the 2021 growing season still are valid.

Michigan, as well as other states, can develop performance-based sampling requirements. This allows MDARD to

take into consideration variables such as seed certification, grower compliance, variety performance, etc. when developing its sampling plan.

Growers also now can remediate non-compliant hemp instead of disposing it. The specific options for remediation are identified and require post-remediation sampling to ensure compliance with acceptable THC levels. The negligence threshold has been raised from 0.5% to 1%, and the maximum number of negligent violations a grower can receive in a growing season (a calendar year) has been limited to one.

customers a piece of hardware so much as it is to simply make the network work for them.

“If you reach out to your internet provider, they may only provide you the internet pipe, but they don’t provide any of the pieces that make that thing work,” he said. “Our goal is to – if your customers need to have a voice device or a working device that connects to the resources back at the office, then we would deliver that as a service to them.”

VanBelkum also warns customers about the risks of having a “flat network.” Most businesses think they can plug new devices, like cameras, into an existing network, and everything will just work. This is rarely the case, he said. Plus, it’s likely jeopardizing other, more critical parts of the business if they’re running on a flat network.

A flat network is a network where all the devices communicating to the world from one premise are talking over one another, often resulting in slower connectivity and poor security.

Many ransomware attacks happen because a low-security device on a network was hacked, allow-

ing the hacker access to the entire network.

“We can take the devices on your network — say, your phones or other low-security devices — and actually segment each thing based on their function,” Dallas VanBelkum said. “It’s just creating different roads for each set of traffic … now those things can’t communicate with each other, so if you had a fish tank thermometer on your network that was easy to hack, you can’t get in through that to hack some other device on the network.”

Todd VanBelkum said his company has the advantage of decades of experience trying to make phones run on a network, which he said is the hardest thing to make run properly on a network. And the company leverages that experience to software programming.

“With phones and video conferencing, it’s real time, so if you lose some information during a video call, you’re going to have some problems,” he said. “Voice takes priority, so we’re going to give it the first pathway out and back in … we did phones, now VPN tunnels? That’s easy.”

Also, effective Dec. 31, 2022, all laboratories testing industrial hemp, including those laboratories testing hemp throughout the growing season to monitor THC levels, must be registered with the United States Drug Enforcement Agency.

“Updating our industrial hemp growers act was a critical step in maintaining regulatory certainty for hemp cultivation in Michigan,” said Gary McDowell, director of the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development. “This helps our hemp growers and processors ensure they’re aligned nationally and signals the importance of supporting this emerging part of our agriculture economy. I appreciate the bi-partisan support and swift movement ensuring Michigan’s legislative framework meets federal requirements.”

Michigan’s Industrial Hemp Growers Act was signed into

law by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer last year. The legislation allowed MDARD to establish an industrial hemp program and authorized it to develop and submit to USDA an industrial hemp plan and, upon approval, use the industrial hemp plan to operate the hemp program.

Prior to Michigan’s Industrial Hemp Growers Act, the state’s legislature enacted the Industrial Hemp Research and Development Act, Public Act 641 of 2018.

It amended the Industrial Hemp Research and Development Act, Public Act 547 of 2014, which authorized growing and cultivating industrial hemp for research purposes only and expanded authorization for the development of a commercial hemp program in the state.

That allowed for CBD products made from industrial hemp with less than 0.3% in THC to be sold at stores.

14

JUNE 1, 2021

GRAND RAPIDS BUSINESS JOURNAL

Furniture leaders speak on pandemic impact CONTINUED FROM PAGE 3

in the company’s retail segment.

As the COVID-19 vaccines started to become available, Eden Workplace conducted a survey in March that found 85% of workers want to return to the workplace, and Jimenez said furniture industry CEOs proved eager to respond to that trend.

Keane said the keyword moving forward will be “hybrid” — that is, avoiding the extremes of bringing everyone back in person or closing down offices and going 100% remote.

Instead, many of Steelcase’s clients are aiming for a middle ground that allows employees to work from home one or two days per week and in person the other days for the sake of improving workplace culture, collaboration and innovation.

“Some of the skills and the relationships we built up over all those years of working together, we’ve benefited from over the last year, but they’re beginning to atrophy as people only see each other on Zoom meetings,” Keane said. “As every meeting starts at a certain time and ends at a certain time, there’s less chit-chat. There’s less connections happening between people. And even from a perspective of learning, learning begins to slow down, and you can feel this most intensely with new employees who have joined companies in the last year. It’s harder for them to get beyond the mechanics of what their job entails to understand, what do other people do and how

do we do things around here? … If learning is slowing down, it’s likely slowing down across the board.”

He added the work-from-home experience is uneven, with some employees experiencing home environment challenges, burnout, mental illness and loneliness, and differences showing up across age, gender and socioeconomic lines.

Steelcase is eager to help its clients meet the moment by offering design and furnishings solutions as well as strategic thinking, Keane said.

Bianchi said it’s important to make sure not only that conference rooms are redesigned to include remote workers and there’s enough furniture for everyone no matter where they are, but that a hybrid environment is 100% inclusive in terms of decision-making, technology access, visibility and opportunities for advancement.

He said behavioral changes are needed to ensure remote workers’ voices are heard, both in conference calls and in other ways.

Owen added now that collaboration has been shown to be possible outside the office, it will be important for employers who want their employees back in person to make offices “desirable destinations for employees, not just places that you have to go, but places that create a sense of shared purpose, a sense of belonging, a sense of community, where people want to go and where they’re enticed to go.”

Post-pandemic, Bianchi said he believes changes to the work-

place that aren’t going anywhere include safety features and heightened cleaning procedures for physical and psychological safety, activity-based workstations, environments of choice, technology integration into every space, an increased emphasis on comfort, a heightened connection to nature and the proliferation of outdoor workspaces.

As far as sales channels go, Bianchi echoed Owen’s thoughts that the future of sales will happen through a combination of e-commerce and in-person contact, with customers looking to have face-to-face collaboration with architects, designers and dealers to decide what route to go, and then perhaps completing the transac-

tion digitally.

Keane said in an age when manufacturers all over the world are entering the e-commerce space, it will be increasingly important for commercial furniture manufacturers to differentiate themselves by leveraging their BIFMA-compliant status to communicate that they are selling safe products.

In addition to navigating all of the changes brought on by the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, the climate crisis and the role of corporations in solving it was next on tap in the discussion.

West Michigan furniture manufacturers have long been working toward more sustainable practices in terms of carbon outputs,

water, waste, recycling and the whole circular economy with a team of full-time sustainability experts in place to help. Herman Miller, Haworth and Steelcase worked together with BIFMA to create the BIFMA Level standard for sustainable products. Steelcase recently was recognized by the Wall Street Journal as one of the 100 most sustainably managed companies in the world for having achieved carbon neutrality in 2020 and for setting goals to become carbon negative by 2030.

Keane said Steelcase’s goal is to move sustainability forward for the entire industry — suppliers, peers, small businesses, etc. — by blazing a trail that others can follow.

Mel Trotter launches public phase of capital campaign CONTINUED FROM PAGE 6

Trotter’s mission.

“That is what we are about, focusing on serving our community, the homeless and those that are hurting,” she said. “Tim (Swiney, Mel Trotter’s chief campaign officer), a year and a half ago took me on a tour to show me the men’s shelter, and literally, my eyes were welling up as I was walking through the shelter. That was my first time I had ever seen it, and as I was walking through it, I said, ‘We have got to do better. This is not OK. We have to do better.’ And

so as we were walking through it, I said, ‘OK, Tim, so where do I sign? Who do I make my check payable to? Because we need to get moving on this, like, today.’

And so, I am excited to be able to celebrate today and say, we have progression. … We have raised $9.8 million toward our $14.9 million goal.”

In a video prepared for the campaign launch, Mayor Rosalynn Bliss said, “I do hope that you will join me in supporting Mel Trotter Ministries as they kick off their capital campaign. They are such a

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key partner in our community as we work together to ensure that individuals have a safe place to call home and also a safe place to sleep at night. Their work is really pivotal as we continue to work on finding housing options for every single person that calls Grand Rapids home. So, thank you to Mel Trotter and thank you to all of you for joining us in this important work.”

Those who are interested in donating to the campaign can visit meltrotter.org/immeasurably more.

GRAND RAPIDS BUSINESS JOURNAL

Citizens finds recovery continues in Q1 Increased vaccinations, fiscal package help nation overcome the shocks of COVID-19.

Rachel Watson

rwatsonr@grbj.com

The Citizens Business Conditions Index for the first quarter of the year was in “upbeat territory,” the financial institution said.

Citizens — which is based in Providence, Rhode Island, and has branches in Michigan and 10 other states — published its Q1 2021 Citizens Business Conditions Index May 3. The bank said continued economic recovery from the shock of COVID-19 kept the first quarter’s national index in positive territory, with a healthy reading of 53.3. This compares with the fourth quarter reading of 56. A reading above 50 is considered expansionary.

Michigan had its best quarter since the national Citizens Business Conditions Index was measured in 2014, which Citizens described as good news on the economic recovery front. The Michigan index was at 58.26 for Q1 2021, besting the national index by 4.96 points for the same time period.

The Business Conditions Index is derived from a number of underlying components, many of which improved during the first quarter.

As of Q1 2021, the methodology was modified, with new-business applications and initial jobless claims replacing the wage growth and employment components. The changes were designed to increase timeliness and adjust for the impact of month-to-month trends across the quarterly period.

The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) Manufacturing and Non-Manufacturing Indexes

both rose for the quarter, helping to buoy the Citizens Index.

Initial jobless claims showed periods of weakness, though the trendline was improving by the end of the first quarter, and new-business applications were flat.

Companies in the health care sector led performance for the quarter, according to the bank’s proprietary business activity data.

The index also indicated strong performance from telecommunications companies, government-sector businesses and consumer goods businesses.

JUNE 1, 2021

“Positive vaccination trends have been really powerful in facilitating the normalization of consumer activity, providing a big boost to economic activity. The fiscal package signed in March was a further step toward recovery.”

TONY BEDIKIAN

Ton Bedikian credited positive vaccination trends for normalizing consumer activity. Courtesy Citizens

Better-than-expected vaccination rates buoyed the outlook for many Americans, while a newly signed fiscal relief package provided additional stimulus checks, as well as support for the unemployed and for state governments, Citizens said. These developments helped to boost business activity and put the recovery on more stable footing, based on CBCI indicators. This momentum extended across both manufacturing and services sectors, though mixed signs in employment and new-business applications underscored the uneven progress across the economy.

“Positive vaccination trends have been really powerful in facilitating the normalization of consumer activity, providing a big boost to economic activity. The fiscal package signed in March was a further step toward recovery,” said Tony Bedikian, head of global markets at Citizens.

The index draws from public information and proprietary corporate data to establish a view of business conditions across the country. An index value greater than 50 indicates expansion and points to positive business activity for the next quarter.

15

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JUNE 1, 2021

GRAND RAPIDS BUSINESS JOURNAL

COMMENT & OPINION

GUEST COLUMN Lou Glazer

Five essential economic development lessons

O

racle announced in April it is bringing 8,500 jobs at an average salary of $110,000 to central city Nashville. The company will invest $1.2 billion to build out its new campus, including $175 million for public infrastructure.

The city, in its statement about the Oracle investment, writes: “We are thrilled that Oracle is ready to make a billion-dollar bet on Nashville,” said Mayor John Cooper. “Oracle will bring a record number of high-paying jobs to Nashville and they will pay upfront all the city’s infrastructure costs. This is a huge win for our city. In an unprecedented deal

What Michigan needs, first and foremost, is a human capital-centered economic strategy, not one centered on business creation, retention and attraction. The 21st century economic development foundation is high-quality education systems that prepare the next generation for the economy they are going to work in and communities where mobile talent wants to live and work.

structure for Nashville, no new debt is being issued and there is no burden on our taxpayers. Oracle’s presence will transform the East Bank, and I’m equally excited about the ways Oracle can transform education and career pipelines in Nashville.”

The deal would not burden the city with any additional debt. The proposal does not require any funds from the operating budget.

There are no job grants or bonds required as part of the proposed deal.

In the proposal, Oracle will make a $175 million investment in public infrastructure that a city would ordinarily be required to purchase itself. This includes costs such as a pump station for water and sewer, a pedestrian bridge, wider streets and environmental remediation. Per the economic impact plan, half of Oracle’s future property taxes would go to reimbursing the company for its upfront infrastructure investment, without any interest payments.

The other half of the new property tax base would benefit the city’s general operating fund, from which funds can be directed to investments in affordable housing and neighborhood infrastructure.

“The remaining property tax revenue from the project, the ‘Oracle bonus,’ can fund investments throughout the city. Creating and preserving affordable housing will be my top priority with those

funds,” Cooper added. In addition to the increase in the property tax base, local sales and use tax collections from the proposed project are expected to reach about $8.8 million annually.

News 4 Nashville describes Oracle’s reasons for choosing Nashville this way: “Oracle is in-

terested in Nashville because it provides access to world-class higher education institutions and a talented workforce, boasts a diverse population with a vibrant culture, has a high quality of life while maintaining affordability, CONTINUED ON PAGE 19

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GUEST COLUMN Dave Kahle

Developing your salesperson

W

hich of these issues are worrying you these days?

•Keeping the good salespeople you have?

•Motivating your salespeople?

•Stimulating your salespeople to become more productive?

•Attracting good quality, new salespeople?

If you are concerned about any one of these issues, you are not alone. These are near the top of almost every businessperson’s list these days. With good reason. If you can positively resolve each of these issues, you’ll go a long way to profitably growing your business.

If you can’t, you may have a very rocky road ahead of you.

Now, suppose you could focus on one initiative that would help positively resolve each of these issues. With one simple move, you could help yourself on every one of these troublesome issues.

Is there such an initiative? Is there one thing you can do that will help you keep the good salespeople you have, motivate your salespeople, stimulate your salespeople to become more productive, and attract

good quality candidates?

The answer? Yes. It’s this: You can build a systematic approach to developing your salespeople. And in successfully accomplishing that one thing you’ll resolve all the others.

First a definition. By “development” I mean this: “Continuous improvement in the knowledge, processes, skills and tools necessary to be ever more effective and efficient.” I don’t mean that once a month you have a sales meeting when you talk about problems, new company policies and procedures or discuss a new product. Those kinds of meetings are necessary, but hardly sufficient.

Nor does it mean that you expect your salespeople to learn on the job by trial and error. At best, that is a very time-consuming and costly approach. At worst, it leads to mediocre performance, confusion and frustration on the part of the salesperson as well as his boss.

Most companies who claim to do on the job training are really making an excuse for their lack of ability to do anything better.

I don’t know of any other sophisticated area of human labor where it is expected that every practitioner will figure out how to do the job well on his/her own. I, for one, would not want to settle into my seat on an airplane and have the pilot announce that he’s figured out how to fly this plane on his own. Nor do I want to put my life in the hands of surgeon who learned a surgical procedure by trial and error. The list can go on and on. It includes almost any profession you can think of: lawyers, teachers, social workers, ministers,

engineers, repair technicians, etc.

In every one of these sophisticated jobs, there is a body of knowledge, of principles and procedures, that the practitioners are expected to master. While all of these professions expect people to practice, none of them expect them to learn the basic principles on their own by trial and error.

Are field salespeople somehow different? Are their jobs so simple that it’s easy to learn how to do it well? Or are they somehow super-intelligent and able to figure it all out on their own? Clearly the answer to both questions is no. Sales is an incredibly formidable profession that offers its practitioners a lifetime of challenge. No salesperson is ever as good as he/she could be. And salespeople are no more or less intelligent than their counterparts among teachers, social workers, ministers, and the like.

Not only that, but every other profession expects its members to continually improve themselves.

Show me a doctor, lawyer, CPA, teacher, social worker, minister, etc. who has not gone back for additional training and development in the last two years, and I’ll show you one who is either retired or dead.

Show me a salesperson that hasn’t invested in improving themselves in the last two years and I’ll show you 80% of the salespeople in this

country.

Why is that? One major reason is that most of the companies for whom they work don’t require continuous improvement. One of the main reasons they don’t require it is that they don’t know how to pull it off. So, they busy themselves with “product-oriented” sales meetings and complain often about unmotivated salespeople.

Being systematic about development is far more extensive than that. Here’s what your organization might look like after you have invested in developing your salespeople.

How to develop salespeople You’d have a structured training program for all new hires. There would be a body of knowledge they would need to acquire, skills and processes they would need to master, and benchmarks along the way by which you could measure their progress. This program would teach such important practices as: •Developing territory plans •Planning for sales calls •Strategic planning for account penetration •Relationship building •Prospecting and cold calling •Making appointments •Collecting information CONTINUED ON PAGE 19

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Five essential economic development lessons CONTINUED FROM PAGE 16

and is a top destination for new employees.”

Wow! 8,500 new high-paying jobs with very little public subsidy.

Why? Because this is an economy in which talent attracts capital. The asset that matters most to high-wage employers is concentrated talent, especially young professionals in a wide variety of professions. More than 45% of Nashville/Davidson County residents 25 and older have a four-year degree or more. And Nashville has become one of the nation’s leading talent magnets.

The new economic development success recipe is driven by talent, not business incentives.

There are five essential lessons our state and regional economic leaders can and should learn from Nashville’s success in attracting Oracle: 1. The core of being an economic development competitive state and region is a region’s human capital, not what is included in the offer for a specific business investment opportunity.

2. Placemaking — creating a place where people want to live and work — is key to retaining and attracting high-wage employers.

3. Creating places where people want to live and work is driven by public investments in quality basic services, infrastructure and amenities.

4. Welcoming to all is a core characteristic of high-prosperity regions. People will not live and work in a community that isn’t welcoming.

5. High-wage jobs will continue to be concentrated in offices in high-density, high-amenity big cities. As we bring the virus under control, people — particularly young professionals — are going to want to live in high-density, high-amenity central city neighborhoods and employers are going to want their high-wage employees working together to boost productivity.

For Michigan and its individual regions to be competitive with leading-edge communities like Nashville, the state and its regions need to completely redesign their economic development strategy and practice.

What we think of as state and regional economic development now is the icing on the cake, not the foundation of building a highwage economy. What Michigan needs, first and foremost, is a human capital-centered economic strategy, not one centered on business creation, retention and attraction. The 21st century economic development foundation is high-quality education systems that prepare the next generation for the economy they are going to work in and communities where mobile talent wants to live and work.

Lou Glazer is president of Michigan Future Inc.

JUNE 1, 2021

19

GUEST COLUMN Gaëtan Gerville-Réache

Vacation rentals: Before you invest, know the risks

T

he vacation-rental boom spawned by Airbnb and similar services is undeniable, and there is seemingly no end in sight. If you are thinking of taking advantage by purchasing a summer cottage with the expectation of recovering the costs or even turning a profit, be careful.

For some buyers, this investment works out just fine, but for others, the venture will end in civil infractions, costly lawsuits and financial loss.

You would think that some pre-purchase due diligence could save these investors from trouble, but unfortunately, even savvy buyers are asking the wrong questions of the wrong people.

Short-term rental pitfalls Most people think they can just ask their local zoning and planning department whether local ordinances allow the property to be rented short term and get an answer they can rely on. They will typically get an answer, but not one they should rely on, even when it is coming from the zoning administrator. Their interpretation of the ordinance is not binding on the local government.

As soon as a neighbor complains, the local government or neighbor can sue to enforce a different interpretation than the one given by the zoning administrator. If the courts agree short-term rentals are prohibited under that ordinance, it is game over. It will not matter what you were told before you purchased the property.

Another mistake would-be cottage owners make is thinking that if local ordinances do not expressly prohibit short-term rental of property, then it is allowed. Not true. With zoning ordinances, it works exactly the opposite.

If the zoning ordinance does not say a particular use is allowed, then it is prohibited. Even some zoning administrators fail to fully grasp that concept, which is another reason why relying on the staff’s interpretation can be a bad idea.

On top of that, discerning whether the ordinance actually does allow short-term rentals can be tricky. Last year, the Michigan Supreme Court took up just that question for Spring Lake Township and concluded all four lower court judges who reviewed the case had misinterpreted the zoning ordi-

nance.

Purchasers sometimes fail to realize that even if the local zoning ordinance clearly allows shortterm rental of the property, that “right” may not be one they can purchase with the property. For example, deed restrictions may limit property rights by prohibiting anything but “residential” use, or the property may be subject to association rules that ban rentals.

As with local ordinances, it is not always readily apparent in reading those restrictions and rules that the terms mean shortterm rentals are prohibited. Michigan courts sometimes give the words a meaning that is not obvious.

How to avoid problems Do not despair. There are ways to avoid winding up with a doomed investment.

First, share your intentions for the property with your real estate attorney. Not your realtor, not your friends — your real estate attorney, whose practice is focused on real property law. If you need to know the property can generate revenue before you purchase it, then you need the assurance of

legal counsel that the law does not stand in the way.

Second, get a binding interpretation of the zoning law from the zoning board of appeals if there is any question. The local government will be legally required to abide by its decision.

For associations, there are ways to get greater assurance from the association board as to what the rules mean. An argument could be made that those assurances are binding in court, if they induced you to purchase the property.

The old adage that it is easier to seek forgiveness than permission does not apply to short-term rentals. The law is unforgiving: you either have permission or you do not. So above all else, find out whether or not short-term rentals are permitted before you make that purchase.

Gaëtan Gerville-Réache is a partner in the law firm Warner Norcross + Judd LLP who focuses his practice on appeals, real property litigation and environmental litigation. He regularly argues in the Michigan Supreme Court, including on short-term rental issues. He can be reached at greache@wnj.com.

Some tips toward developing your salesperson CONTINUED FROM PAGE 16

•Maintaining good records •Getting organized •Making persuasive presentations •Gaining commitment •Implementing customer decisions •Following up to assure satisfaction •Penetrating key accounts Once a certain minimum level of competency is attained, the salesperson would then be required to continually improve on his/her skills by investing time and energy in getting better at the job. You’d make that happen by: •Requiring monthly or quarterly involvement in “learning experiences.” These could be anything from classes at the local university and audio or video training programs to something as simple as checking a book out of the library and sharing a list of good ideas at the next sales meeting.

•Holding regular developmental sales meetings in which you focus on a special behavior or practice and help people improve in that one area.

At some point in the development of a salesperson, he/she will likely look for additional career challenges. When that happens, the focus of development should be on providing the salesperson opportunities to expand his/her competency into areas that can be of assistance to the company in areas other than sales. This is when some salespeople want to focus on training or coaching others, for example. They can be channeled into learning how to do that. Others may want to expand into management and should be encouraged to begin gaining management skills and practices. Others may want to pursue team leadership, etc.

A comprehensive development system should account for

three things: •Learning the basic principles, processes and tools for effective selling.

•Continuous improvement in the sophisticated practices of highly effective salespeople.

•Opportunities to expand in complementary careers and learn the skills necessary to do so.

How will this help you retain and attract good salespeople, motivate the ones you have and improve the productivity of the entire group?

Which would you want to work for? A company that doesn’t invest anything in developing its people, or one that has a regular, formal and systematic approach such as the one I described above?

Silly question.

Imagine yourself interviewing a prospective salesperson, before and after you’ve implemented the system described above. Before that, you say to your candidate, “We expect you to learn on the job.”

After that, you say, “We have a structured training program to assure that you master the basic practices that will ensure your success.

Then, when you’ve mastered those, we have a system to stimulate your continuous career growth so that you are always growing better at your job. Finally, we have a system to help you expand your knowledge and skills into complementary areas like sales management, team leadership, and so on, if you are so inclined.”

Everything else being equal, which company would you rather work for? That’s how a development program will help you attract the right kind of people. Clearly, the same is true of your current sales force. Begin to require continuous improvement, provide the means for them to do so and invest

in them, and you’ll be surprised how loyal they become.

This kind of program cannot help but improve your sales productivity. When all your salespeople know that constant and measurable improvement is required, most of them will begin to work on that. And you’ll begin to see the results in increased sales and gross profits.

Training and development like this can be one of your best investments. If only one salesperson acquires only one new account because of your investment in their development, it’s likely that one new account will more than pay for a year’s worth of development costs by itself.

Moving in the right direction Here are some small steps you can take toward becoming the kind of learning organization I’ve described.

Budget for development. As simple as it may seem, this one step will be a major one. Once you have a budget, you’ll find it much easier to actually spend that money. The decision will not be “if” but rather “how.” Also, by budgeting money for development and then letting your managers know, you will have sent a powerful message that you are serious and willing to invest some of the company’s resources in it.

The natural question is, how much should you invest? There are some benchmarks available. The “Facing the Forces of Change 2000” study found that high-performing wholesale distributors spent about 2.5% of payroll on training, while an ASTD member survey found that its member companies averaged 3.2% of payroll. Since training is a smaller issue than development,

and since salespeople can generally benefit the company more than drivers, warehouse workers and production personnel, I’d suggest a bit higher number. I like to see 5% of payroll invested in continuous development of the sales team.

Have your sales managers create individual development plans with each salesperson. It is common practice for sales managers to hold annual goal-setting meetings with their charges in which performance goals are identified.

That’s a great opportunity to create annual development goals and strategies at the same time.

Doing so lets everyone know that continuous development is a requirement of the job.

Regularly generate learning opportunities. Learning opportunities are events at which salespeople are exposed to new ideas or reminded of good practices. They can encompass a wide range of possibilities, from reading a new book on sales strategies to having roundtable discussions of success stories and common problems.

The point is that you generate learning opportunities on a regular basis and require your salespeople to take part in them.

While not everyone will gain the same thing from each event, over time they’ll understand that you are serious about their growth, and that their continuous development is your priority and their responsibility.

Dave Kahle is an author, consultant and speaker who has presented in 47 states and 11 countries, improved the performance of thousands of B2B salespeople and authored 13 books.

Receive his insights on a regular basis here: https://www.davekahle.com/ subscribe-daves-e-zines/.

20

GRAND RAPIDS BUSINESS JOURNAL

JUNE 1, 2021

ACCOUNTING

Baker Holtz, CPAs and Advisors announced the additions of Hannah Knott, Mackenzie Sanders and Ethan Wingrove as associates.

ADVERTISING & MARKETING

King Media named Laurie DeYoung as vice president.

RED66 Marketing hired Avery Jones as an account manager and Brianna Flemings as a web project manager.

ARCHITECTURE & ENGINEERING

Benton Harbor-based Wightman is the recipient of a Merit Award from the American Institute of Architects of Southwest Michigan for the new Cassopolis Municipal Complex located in Cassopolis.

The American Council of Engineering Companies of Michigan recently recognized Fleis & VandenBrink with its Engineering Merit Award for its Clean Water A Flush Away for West Shore Community College in Scottville.

Wightman announced licensed professional engineer Philip Doorlag has been named regional director of its Kalamazoo office.

ARTS

Diane Lobbestael, Grand Rapids Symphony’s vice president of development, transitioned to a part-time retirement role focused on planned giving.

Michael Naess has been hired as GRS’s new vice president of development following a national search.

The Grand Rapids Public Museum announced Linsey Gleason, Varnum LLP, has been elected as chair of the GRPM Foundation board of trustees.

AWARDS

Alignable.com announced New Look Painting Company LLC owner Mike Beaulieu is the recipient of the Local Business Person of the Year of Grand Rapids.

KPS Essentials, the clinically validated luxury organic skincare company, announced its Antioxidant Cacao Masque has been awarded a spot in the Star Products of 2020 list by People en Español.

Stephen Herbruck, Greg Herbruck, and

JUN 1-6 Krasl Art Center New Exhibitions. Boom Bloom, featuring Nikki Renee Anderson and Renee Robbins, in KAC’s main gallery, and The Undetectable Presence: A Selection of Sculpture, by Mike Slaski, in the artlab. Cost: free and open to public.

707 Lake Blvd., St. Joseph. Information/ registration: (269) 983-0271 or krasl.org.

JUN 1-12 LowellArts GETAWAY New Gallery Exhibit. Featuring artwork by 100 artists from Michigan that celebrates the places or moments in time that provide us a chance to retreat, relax and recharge.

Tuesday-Friday,10 a.m.-6 p.m., and Saturday, noon-5pm. LowellArts Gallery, 223 W. Main St. Lowell. Information/registration: lowellartsmi.org/getaway.

JUN 2 Meeting Professionals International Michigan Chapter Virtual Year-End Awards/Recognition Event. 4-6 p.m.

Cost: $30/members and nonmembers.

Registration: bit.ly/MPIAwards.

JUN 4 Saugatuck Center for the Arts Jump Into Summer. Featuring live music, visual arts, community art projects, all-ages activities and local vendors. 5-9 p.m., SCA Outdoor Plaza Stage. Registration: sc4a.org/event/jump-into-summer.

JUN 4 Wyoming-Kentwood Area Chamber of Commerce Connected Chamber Women. 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m., Stonewater Country Club, 7177 Kalamazoo Ave. SE, Caledonia. Cost: $15/members.

Information/registration: Bob@southkent. org.

Harry “Herb” Herbruck of Saranacbased Herbruck’s Poultry Ranch are the recipients of the Distinguished Service Award from the Michigan State University College of Agriculture and Natural Resources for outstanding contributions to Michigan’s agriculture and natural resources indusSanders tries.

BUSINESS SERVICES

FASTSIGNS of Grand Rapids owner Michael Gilpin received a CEO Circle Award, which recognizes the top 25 centers with the highest sales volume in the U.S. and Canada in 2020. Gilpin also was recognized for his service on the Franchise Advisory Council. Wesley Bekins, inside sales specialist, is the recipient of Circle of Excellence Bekins Award, which recognizes inside sales professionals who are committed to service excellence.

Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce director of inclusion Ken James has obtained his Executive Certification in Diversity Coaching and is recognized as an Associate Diversity Coach through Coach Diversity Institute.

Haviland Enterprises Inc. announced the appointment of Sean C. Regan, senior vice president of product marketing at Bissell Homecare, to its board of directors.

Hungerford Nichols CPAs + Advisors hired Kristen Spence as fraud and litigation team manager.

JetCo Solutions announced the addition of Margarita Huerta as a research specialist.

Zeeland-based Lakeshore Advantage appointed Hawk Dobbins, Fairlife; Dale Nesbary, Muskegon Community College; and Bill Pink, Grand Rapids Community,

JUN 4-6 Festival of the Arts PLEIN AIR (Outdoors). Will include musicians and landscape artists within designated social zones and throughout downtown Grand Rapids. Festival-goers will be encouraged to purchase food and drinks from local restaurants and enjoy them in social zones where live art and musical performances will be taking place all weekend long. Information/registration: festivalgr.org.

JUN 7 Wedgwood Christian Services 36th Annual Charity Golf Classic. Includes 18-hole scramble, practice green, driving range, cart, two meals, door and contest prizes. Egypt Valley Country Club.

Information/registration: https://www. wedgwood.org/golf.

JUN 8 Michigan West Coast Chamber of Commerce Creating An Ideal Workspace Webinar. Four design principles to be discussed by Nikki Probst, vice president of marketing and business relations, Custer Inc. 10-10:45 a.m.

Cost: free/members, $20/nonmembers.

Information/registration: (616) 392-2389 or info@westcoastchamber.org.

JUN 8-29 Grand Rapids Young Professionals Golf Clinic. June 8: 6-7:30 p.m., June 15, 22, 29: 6-7 p.m., Thornapple Pointe, 7211 48th St. SE. Cost: $60. Information/registration: bit. ly/GRYPGolfClinic.

JUN 9 Kellogg Bird Sanctuary Birds and Coffee Zoom Chat. Examining grassland birds, including the Northern Bobwhite, Eastern

CHANGE-UPS & CALENDAR

to its board of directors.

CONSTRUCTION

Above Roofing recently marked its 25th anniversary. Robert Freeman founded the company in 1996.

EDUCATION

Baker College appointed three diversity, equity and inclusion officers for the college system: Dana Clark, Lesa Louch and Kristina Marshall. Baker also was recently recognized by the Centre for Global Inclusion for its DEI best practices.

Ferris State University’s online Master of Science degree program in Information Security and Intelligence has a Top25 ranking from U.S. News and World Report.

Grand Rapids Public Schools, C2AE, TMP Architecture and Rockford Construction announced the new Southwest Middle High School Academia Bilingue has received Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) for Schools Silver certification.

Hope College’s Boerigter Center for Calling and Career and Van Wylen Library have received the 2021 group Innovation Award from the Commission for Career Services of the American College Personnel Association.

FINANCIAL SERVICES

Greenleaf Trust in Kalamazoo announced the addition of Thanya Rhoades and Ondrea Brussee as record keeping analysts.

Flow-Rite marks 40th anniversary Flow-Rite, a Byron Center-based manufacturer of injection-molded fluid controls components for boats, RVs, golf carts, hydroponics and industrial applications, has reached a milestone: its 40th anniversary. Dan Campau founded the company in 1981 when it was known as Flow-Rite Controls. Within four years, it developed a global network of distributors for its battery watering system.

The ISO 9001:2015-certified company has a long history of continuous process improvement. Having earned its first patent in 1985, it has added hundreds since. ident of finance; and René Wheaton to executive vice president of home and community-based services. Carolyn Flietstra, executive vice president of home and community-based services, has retired.

United Way of the Lakeshore has partnered with Kindred, a full-service branding and marketing and its founder and director of strategy, Don Kalisz, to help with United Way of the Lakeshore’s media relations and storytelling

REAL ESTATE

TRANSPORTATION

HUMAN SERVICES

MANUFACTURING

Meryl Cook joined Byron Center-based Flow-Rite as senior marketing manager.

Jason Webb joined Detroit-based Cushman & Wakefield as senior director in Grand Rapids to establish a Cushman & Wakefield presence in Western Michigan.

NONPROFITS

RETAIL

Holland Home announced the promotions of Troy Vugteveen to chief operating officer; David Tiesenga to chief strategy officer; Adam Kinder to chief financial officer; Steve Quist to vice pres-

TECHNOLOGY

D.A. Blodgett – St. John’s announced the hiring of Regenail Thomas as vice president of employee experience.

SpartanNash appointed Jason Monaco as executive vice president and chief financial officer. Todd Riksen has been promoted to vice president, corporate controller.

Richard Tyler joined Fusion IT LLC as technology solutions adviser.

Meadowlark and Bobolink. 10 a.m.

Cost: free. Registration: bit.ly/BirdZoom.

purchased prior to show. Information/registration: blandfordnaturecenter.org.

JUN 10 Builders Exchange of Michigan Brews, Builders and Benefits. Networking opportunity. 3-5 p.m., Building Bridges Professional Services, 1530 Madison Ave. SE. Information/registration: (616) 9498650 or courtney@grbx.com.

JUN 12 Cumulus Radio Muskegon Summer Wine Up. Wine festival features 20 different wineries and more than 100 different wines. 2-8 p.m., Hackley Park, downtown Muskegon. Cost: $15, includes four wine sample tickets. Information/registration: muskegonsummerwineup.com.

JUN 10 Rotary Club of Grand Rapids Event Via Zoom. Topic: The Changing World of Public Relations and Communications and How the Pandemic Has Led to More Rapid Change for Business, by John Truscott, CEO, Truscott Rossman. Noon1:15 p.m. Information/registration: grrotary. org/events.

JUN 10 Plunkett Cooney/State Bar of Michigan Appellate Practice Section Virtual Panel Discussion. Topic: Just Plain Right: The Craft of Creating Persuasive Appellate Arguments. 4-5 p.m. Cost: free.

Information/registration: plunkettcooney. com/events-SBM-Persuasive-Appel late-Arguments-Webinar.

JUN 11 Multi Chamber of Commerce Golf Outing. 8 a.m. tee time, Gleneagle Golf Club, 6150 14th Ave., Hudsonville. Cost: $110/golfer, $400/foursome. Information/ registration: Bob@southkent.org.

JUN 12 Blandford Nature Center Outdoor Concert Series. Featuring The Bootstrap Boys. 7-9 p.m., Blandford Nature Center, 1715 Hillburn Ave. NW. Cost: $20/members, $25/nonmembers. Tickets must be

SPORTS

Blythefield Country Club youth caddies Olivia Howell-Hummel and Briggs Maloney were awarded Evans Scholarships, a full housing and tuition college grant offered to golf caddies. Both will attend Michigan State University.

The Evans Scholar program is valued at an estimated $120,000 over four years.

Greenridge Realty recently was recognized with a top Member Achievement Award from Leading Real Estate Companies of the World.

Miranda Ingraham has been promoted to marketing and communications manager at Beacon Hill at Eastgate, a retirement community in Grand Rapids.

Sam Rau, technical services manager for Micro Visions Inc., has been awarded as an MVP honoree through the Corp!

JUN 14 Wyoming-Kentwood Area Chamber of Commerce Government Matters Zoom Meeting - with Elected Officials. 8-9 a.m.

Information/registration: (616) 531-5990 or michelle@southkent.org.

JUN 14-MID AUG Grand Rapids Public Museum’s Camp Curious Program. Includes in-person and virtual options. For kids pre-K through 12th grade, using the museum as a learning lab through a variety of camp offerings. Cost: $35 for single-day, in-person camps; $40 for multi-day Digital Discovery sessions, with discounts available for museum members. Information/ registration: grpm.org/Educlasses.

JUN 15 Family Business Alliance First Annual Fore Family Golf Outing. 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Thornapple Pointe, 7211 48th St. SE. Cost: $100/person, $400/foursome, cocktail hour only/$40. For members and hole sponsors only. Information/registration: members.fbagr.org/events/details/ fore-family-golf-outing-719.

JUN 16 Michigan West Coast Chamber of Commerce Zoom Meeting. Topic is

Gerald R. Ford International Airport again has received the Certificate of Excellence in Financial Reporting by the Government Finance Officers Association for its 2019 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report.

CHANGE-UPS POLICY: The Business Journal welcomes submissions to the Change-Ups section. Send announcements concerning personnel changes, new businesses, changes of address etc. to Change-Ups Editor, Grand Rapids Business Journal, 401 Hall St. SW, Suite 331, Grand Rapids, MI 49503 or email bjchangeups@grbj.com.

Cultural Diversity: Culturally Intelligent Innovation. 9-10:15 a.m. Cost: free/members, $30/nonmembers. Information/registration: (616) 392-2389 or info@westcoastchamber.org.

JUN 16 Muskegon Lakeshore Chamber of Commerce Member Connect Networking Via Zoom. 9-10 a.m. Registration: bit.ly/JuneMemberConnect.

MEETINGS & CONVENTIONS Information: Stephanie Bradley, (616) 233-3577 or sbradley@experiencegr. com.

JUN 6 Michigan Manufacturers Association 2021 Morning Series. Holiday Inn-Grand Rapids-Airport.

CALENDAR POLICY: The Business Journal welcomes submissions to the calendar section. Send items to Calendar Editor, Grand Rapids Business Journal, 401 Hall St. SW, Suite 331, Grand Rapids, MI 49503 or email bjcal endar@grbj.com. Submissions must be received at least three weeks prior to the event.

The Business Journal calendar posted on the publication’s website (grbj.com) includes listings for events extended beyond those printed in the weekly publication that are limited by space restrictions.

PUBLIC RECORD

GRAND RAPIDS BUSINESS JOURNAL

Failure Lab launches SHE training program for women CONTINUED FROM PAGE 3

for women to live fully integrated lives. But then, especially with COVID, the impact on working women has been particularly disproportionate. So, it just felt like (SHE) is very needed right now.”

While more and more women are entering positions of power and leadership on a national and global scale, at the close of 2020, despite making up 50.8% of the U.S. population, women made up only 7.8% of the CEOs in the S&P 500 (this number up from 6% in 2019). According to the U.S. Department of Labor, women are making 82.3 cents on the dollar compared to men, with minority women faring even worse. In 2020, Black and Latina women with bachelor’s degrees made 65% of the wages of their white male counterparts.

The pandemic has only exacerbated the systemic inequity seen by women. COVID-19 has brought into sharp focus the continuing disparity between the sexes as the world struggles to handle virtual work, quarantines, school closings and overwhelming uncertainty. In February, women’s labor force participation was at 55%, a number that has not been seen in the U.S. since April 1987, according to the DOL. “If you talk to any successful woman, the ones who by all outward appearances are doing amazing work, juggling all the balls with apparent ease — every single one of us thinks that we should be doing better, and we can tell you, in great detail, a dozen ways in which we are failing on a daily basis,” Baeten said.

“Women hold themselves and one another to ridiculous standards, often manifested in unhealthy ways. Both of those things — the external and the internal — need attention. That’s the reason for SHE,” Baeten said.

She added one of the things she became most excited about after Failure Lab concluded beta testing a condensed version of the SHE curriculum a few weeks ago was the women’s eager responses to being part of something like this.

“We were really pleasantly surprised and amazed that people were so into it. There’s not really an opportunity right now for us to network in the way that we used to — meeting new people, having space to have robust and interesting conversations with smart people. The feedback that we got every single week was, ‘We could have gone on and on,’ or, ‘We could have had more time to talk about this topic and that topic.’ …

I was nervous that it would be too much — people are so tired of being on Zoom — but I think we’re also just desperate for community and connection.”

Baeten said there’s a lot of research out there right now that shows employee contentment has to do with how many level-two relationships people have in the workplace. A level-two relationship is 20% more intimate than just a work acquaintance — a person you know something about who is not exactly a friend, not somebody you would hang out with after work, but who you feel

close to in your workspace.

“One of the fastest ways to get to a level-two relationship is to have facilitated, real conversations about real things in a safe space,” Baeten said. “… We generally don’t get together and talk about how we feel about failing and whether or not our lives have set us up to feel like we can take risks.”

Heyne will facilitate the sixweek virtual program, which will be limited to 15 women and will be offered starting June 23 at two times: 12-1:30 p.m. Wednesdays and 4:30-6 p.m. Thursdays. Tuition is $1,500 and includes a Failure Archetype Assessment; access to six sessions; all necessary materials and resources; and a private Failure Lab-SHE community group.

Baeten said the first cohort of SHE is designed for executives — defined as people who are responsible for a team or an organization, managing people, not products. The second cohort will focus on emerging leaders and likely will launch in the late fall or early winter, after Failure Lab conducts its next general management training cohort in September.

“The idea of keeping the executives as a separate cohort from the emerging leaders is that we don’t want these women to feel like it’s another space where they’re tasked with mentoring,” Baeten said. “We want this to be a space where they can interact with peers of various environments who have (similar) life experiences, because the conversations that happen then can be more impactful and pointed.”

In addition to the U.S.-based cohort, a separate facilitator is going to run a cohort simultaneously in Australia.

Enrollment for SHE is now open at failure-lab.com/she.

Curriculum overview Session 1: Failure Lab 101 — Failure & Foundations: An invitation for self-reflection. How does your relationship with failure express itself in your life?

Session 2: Failure & Physicality — Failure & Practice: Understand the physicality of failure and stress. Master the tools to show up in your life with purpose.

Session 3: Failure & Women — Failure & Power Dynamics: What unique challenges do women leaders face? How does patriarchy impact our lives and our legacies?

Session 4: Failure & Risk — Failure & Imposter Syndrome: Women have specific internal and external challenges around risk tolerance and imposter syndrome. This session will unpack the things that hold you back.

Session 5: Failure & Resilience — Failure & Nourishment: “They tried to bury us. They didn’t realize we were seeds.” Create the resources you need to thrive.

Session 6: Failure & Community — Failure & Mentorship: The power of community. Leverage your power to empower other women and girls. Move into your future with confidence and purpose.

More information about Fail ure Lab is at failure-lab.com.

MORTGAGES

Selected mortgages filed with Kent County Register of Deeds BODE, Gregory et al, Independent Bank, Cascade Twp., $427,500 DUQUETTE, Stephen et al, Consumers Credit Union, East Grand Rapids, $792,000 BOUW, Matthew E. et al, Wells Fargo Bank, Caledonia, $650,000 KOSTREZEWSKI, James, Quicken Loans, Wyoming, $341,050 LARSON, Maxwell J. et al, Lake Michigan Credit Union, Caledonia, $375,000 KOBRAK, Harold C. et al, CEFCU, Cascade Twp., $375,000 DEBOEF, Maxwell et al, Inlanta Mortgage, Parcel: 411425102002, $466,400 HENDON, Nick et al, ChoiceOne Bank, Algoma Twp., $372,725 FAVAZZA, Ashley M. et al, Independent Bank, Sparta, $399,479 O’CONNOR, James G. et al, Old National Bank, East Grand Rapids, $652,640 WESTGATE, Chris et al, Lake Michigan Credit Union, East Grand Rapids, $525,000 FISHER, Andrew C. et al, Independent Bank, Parcel: 411412476014, $780,000 TUCKER, Gerald E. et al, Huntington National Bank, Cannon Twp., $364,389 MCALINDON, John M. et al, Huron Community Bank, Cascade Twp., $475,000 BEZINQUE, Steven et al, PNC Bank, Cascade Twp., $429,800 HOYER, Jordan et al, Huntington National Bank, East Grand Rapids, $359,000 DKM PROPERTIES LLC, Fifth Third Bank, Plainfield Twp., $1,863,000 RAINONE, Robert J. et al, Lake Michigan Credit Union, Tyrone Twp., $358,050 PFAUTH, Robert J. II et al, T2 Financial, Bowne Twp., $352,000 CALDERONE, Andrew J. et al, Lake Michigan Credit Union, Cascade Twp., $548,250 LAPONSIE, Gloria, HUD, Parcel: 411321251029, $375,000 WILEY, Brian J. et al, Mercantile Bank, Byron Twp., $373,500 EAGLE READY FOODS LLC, Independent Bank, Parcel: 411815101042, $1,418,034 JANNUZZI, Keith et al, Fifth Third Bank, Byron Twp., $385,000 JOSHUA R SMITH CO. LLC, Lake Michigan Credit Union, Parcel: 411429310003, $648,000 HAADSMA, Robert K. et al, PNC Bank, Ada Twp., $800,000 FRITZ, Christopher J. et al, Mercantile Bank, Ada Twp., $374,500 LAHAIE, Ryan A. et al, Lake Michigan Credit Union, Cascade Twp., $548,250 BENSON, Derek et al, Lake Michigan Credit Union, Plainfield Twp., $359,910 FORD, Tyler et al, Summit Home Mortgage, Cascade Twp., $711,200 DANNISON, Heather et al, Finance of America Mortgage, Caledonia, $530,000 BOYCE, Hayden et al, Lake Michigan Credit Union, Parcel: 411414127022, $1,048,500

HERRMAN, Max et al, Lake Michigan Credit Union, Tyrone Twp., $360,750 COLLETTE, Greg et al, Consumers Credit Union, Plainfield Twp., $403,650 COMISKEY, Troy M. et al, Freedom Mortgage Corp., Cascade Twp., $429,752 MOORE, Edward J. et al, Greenstone Farm Credit Services, Algoma Twp., $525,000 CLEMENT, Melissa, Union Home Mortgage Corp., Cascade Twp., $452,000 ROERSMA & WURN BUILDERS INC., Lake Michigan Credit Union, Parcel: 411403252009, $449,925 BAGUSS, Gerald L., HUD, Nelson Twp., $562,000 ZOULEK, Keith L. et al, Grand River Bank, Byron Twp., $507,000 BREEN, Zachary J. et al, Fairway Independent Mortgage Corp., Algoma Twp., $350,000 HORTON, Kenneth E. et al, Quicken Loans, Plainfield Twp., $364,310 VANHOUTEN, Todd et al, Northern Mortgage Services, Cascade Twp., $399,500 CURCURU, Joseph et al, Lake Michigan Credit Union, Cannon Twp., $712,000 WOODS, Samuel E. et al, Lake Michigan Credit Union, Cascade Twp., $350,000 VANGELDEREN TRUST, Independent Bank, Plainfield Twp., $345,000 RINGLER, Steven L. et al, Independent Bank, Cascade Twp., $1,000,000 WYLIE, Brian et al, Carrington Mortgage Services, Gaines Twp., $362,000 GARCIA, Manuel et al, Churchill Mortgage Corp., Byron Twp., $392,000 THORNBURG, James F. et al, Neighborhood Loans, Cannon Twp., $422,100 BELL, Jermaine, United Bank, Parcel: 412217202003, $548,000 SMITH, Brian S. et al, Home Point Financial Corp., Cascade Twp., $443,200 BANGA, Ramandeep et al, TCF National Bank, Ada Twp., $644,232 CALLAHAN TRUST, Macatawa Bank, Parcel: 411414227013, $510,000 BURT, Gabor G. et al, Macatawa Bank, Parcel: 411413476005, $678,500 WILSON, Walter D. et al, Supreme Lending, Oakfield Twp., $388,500 MANDIJA, Arben et al, Lake Michigan Credit Union, Cascade Twp., $465,000 GREYDANUS, Martin et al, Bank of America, Cascade Twp., $368,500 GORDON, Bryan et al, Neighborhood Loans, Cascade Twp., $405,000 G&H REAL ESTATE INVESTMENTS LLC, Macatawa Bank, Wyoming, $1,350,000 KERNS, Josh et al, United Bank, Parcel: 412116302012, $413,800 FICK, Sara, United Bank, Lowell, $344,000 T BOSGRAAF HOMES LLC, TCF National Bank, Cascade Twp., $463,400 LEHNER, Robert H. Jr. et al, Fifth Third Bank, Ada Twp., $345,000 KUHN, Harold C. III, Old National Bank, Cascade Twp., $805,000 LEWANDOWSKI, Matthew P. et al, Lake Michigan Credit Union, Caledonia, $548,250

JUNE 1, 2021

21

DEUSER, Robert et al, Sun West Mortgage Co., East Grand Rapids, $353,128 ZYLSTRA, Brad A. et al, Ally Bank, East Grand Rapids, $374,469 BEAUMONT, Jeffrey et al, Citibank, Cascade Twp., $375,000 HILLVIEW TOWNHOUSES APARTMENTS LLC, Wells Fargo Bank, Rockford, $10,800,000 TIEDE, Matthew A. et al, Old National Bank, Vergennes Twp., $681,703 LOWN, Steven J. et al, Old National Bank, Cascade Twp., $560,000 FISK, Jeffrey et al, Huntington National Bank, Tyrone Twp., $512,000 BOESCHENSTEIN, Jane E., Mercantile Bank, East Grand Rapids, $381,500 TIMMER, Jordan et al, TCF National Bank, Byron Twp., $590,000 KENNARD, Daniel T. et al, Lake Michigan Credit Union, Plainfield Twp., $690,811 BEARD, Benjamin et al, Huntington National Bank, Caledonia, $380,000 ZUIDEMA, William H., Lake Michigan Credit Union, Plainfield Twp., $335,600 VANGESSEL, John M. et al, Lakeview Loan Servicing, East Grand Rapids, $413,000 RIDDLE, Scott et al, Neighborhood Loans, Cascade Twp., $452,800 RADLE, David J. et al, Old National Bank, Plainfield Twp., $548,250 BACKUS, Christopher et al, Bank of America, East Grand Rapids, $1,378,000 HICKS, Brian et al, Macatawa Bank, East Grand Rapids, $487,400 DRISCOL, David et al, JPMorgan Chase Bank, Parcel: 411434353042, $352,800 DRAKE, Michael D., Lake Michigan Credit Union, Cascade Twp., $434,172 KREBIEHL, Wade et al, Lake Michigan Credit Union, Parcel: 411411251006, $510,000 ELON HOMES LLC, West Michigan Community Bank, Gaines Twp., $378,388 VILLEGAS, Vincent E. et al, Semper Home Loans, Algoma Twp., $468,000 ONDERSMA, Christopher et al, Mr. Cooper, Courtland Twp., $422,000 PHAN, Dan Q., Mutual of Omaha Mortgage, Byron Twp., $426,500 HENRY, Alan R. et al, Better Mortgage Corp., Ada Twp., $395,566 GRAYSTONE HOMES LLC, Lake Michigan Credit Union, Plainfield Twp., $1,176,000 LAMPEN, Russell J. et al, Fifth Third Bank, East Grand Rapids, $345,000 WEATHERLY, David L. et al, Inlanta Mortgage, Ada Twp., $532,500 EAGLE CREEK HOMES LLC, Macatawa Bank, Cannon Twp., $468,277 GOHLKE, Eric et al, Lake Michigan Credit Union, Plainfield Twp., $392,000 AHEARNE, Jaclyn, Huntington National Bank, Byron Twp., $352,600

PUBLIC RECORD AVAILABLE ONLINE: For the full version of this week’s Public Record, visit the Grand Rapids Business Journal’s website at grbj.com.

GVSU joins national effort to refine learning CONTINUED FROM PAGE 3

compared with 22% in the second quartile, 37% in the third quartile and 60% in the top quartile.

COVID-19 has further exacerbated the crisis. A December 2020 McKinsey & Company study estimated that “students of color could be six to 12 months behind, compared with four to eight months for white students. While all students are suffering, those who came into the pandemic with the fewest academic opportunities are on track to exit with the greatest learning loss.”

With the formation of REP4, the institutions are leaning on the insights of their students to provide solutions that can drive productive change that addresses their needs and desires.

“Universities have been subjected to grave scrutiny not just in politics but by students and their supporters in recent years,” said Marlene Tromp, president of Boise State University. “Students want to know that what they are getting is what they are going to need when they go out in the world, that they are being challenged, that they are getting the kinds of opportunities that higher education promises.”

She said out-of-the-box thinking and a focus on student success will drive the initiative.

“We are really looking forward to learning from our learners and convening with other partners in the Northwest region of the country,” she said.

Russell Lowery-Hart, president of Amarillo College, said REP4 is transforming the learning structure that will “save higher education from itself.” Lowery-Hart said at his institution, the students are engaged. They have written the school’s values and changed the semester structure from a 16-week to an eight-week term.

“Higher education is at risk of irrelevance if we cannot adapt and innovate for a shifting landscape in technology and workforce development,” he said. “REP4 links transformative institutions committed to reimagining learning.

Amarillo College is honored to join this work with the goal of creating 21st century skills students can take with them on new and better transfer pathways.”

GVSU has implemented two ideas from the Learner Engagement Challenge. One idea is focused on a life readiness class to

help students see opportunities that lie ahead of them; the other idea calls for a theme-based curriculum with a goal of making clear connections to careers.

Each of the founding six partners will hold its own regional summit for REP4, with Grand Valley State University hosting the national convening on Aug. 5. The alliance is intended to grow over time and other institutions are invited to become involved with REP4.

“We all have a commitment to higher education,” Mantella said. “We have an appreciation, a deep appreciation for the power of insight that learners can bring, whether they are here with us or they are aspiring to come to us in the near future. We have a strong and deep commitment to community. We have a deep commitment to the equity in education. We are ready and have been embracing change and we are richly different in our setting, in our strategy, our cultures, our plans, our institutional types, which makes a really exciting environment for change to be examined, for experiments to be looked at, learning to happen and innovation to accelerate.”

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STREET TALK

the next year.

Business Leaders for Michigan conducted the internal member survey in late April and early May.

eager to resume their lives preCOVID.” Sales year-over-year are up.

According to MRA’s April retail volume report, home furnishing sales have been strong over the past year, increasing more than 1,700% over April 2020; department store purchases increased by 214.28% and clothing and shoe stores are up 209.36%.

Many businesses that took the survey report their biggest challenges are finding enough people to work and waiting on supply chain delays, Hallan said.

RETAIL REELING For the first time in six months, Michigan’s retail industry is feeling the pain.

The Michigan Retailers Association’s index for April reported a month-over-month decline in sales for the first time since November.

The April Retail Index survey came in at 67.1, a decrease from March’s 92.4. Approximately 58% of Michigan retailers reported an increase in sales over March, 22% reported a sales decline, and 20% reported no change.

Looking ahead, 57% of retailers predict their sales will continue to rise through July, but 15% said they expect a sales decline, and 28% anticipate no change.

“Labor shortages and supply chain challenges that have been noted around the country have contributed to the decline we experienced in April here in Michigan,” said William J. Hallan, MRA president and CEO. “We are optimistic that sales will trend higher in May due to the increase in vaccinations and Michiganders

LIFESAVER In honor of the Bronson trauma and emergency team that saved their nine-year-old daughter’s life more than 35 years ago, Chris and Barbara Christoffersen have created an endowment to support services that will help in caring for patients during a medical trauma for years to come.

Rachel Christoffersen suffered a car crash in 1985 in Kalamazoo, which left her with severe damage to her liver, spleen and gall bladder. She also had a tear in a vein in her abdomen that carries blood to the heart, and a blood clot in her brain. At the time, doctors told her parents the chance of survival was one in 100.

During surgery, the trauma team at Bronson’s Level 1 Trauma Center used a device for the very first time that would remove, clean and return blood to Rachel’s body. After two weeks in pediatric intensive care, Rachel went on to eventually make a full recovery.

“We were amazed to see the combined efforts of many people whose expertise, coordination

Leaving home behind Trauma team.

M

ichigan’s business leaders see robust growth ahead in the state’s economy during the next six to 12 months and plan a return to in-person office work in the 3rd and 4th quarters of this year, according to a quarterly economic survey completed by Business Leaders for Michigan.

Approximately 92 percent of survey respondents say the state’s economy will likely remain strong and growing during the next six to 12 months.

“With our progress on vaccination and the influx of federal stimulus dollars into Michigan, the state’s largest employers are predicting a strong period of economic growth,” said Jeff Donofrio, president and CEO of Business Leaders for Michigan. “Whether that growth will be sustained depends on if our state’s policymakers invest federal stimulus funding strategically to make Michigan more competitive in the future.”

Under Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s “MI Vacc to Normal” plan, remote work was no longer required starting May 24.

“Even with the removal of restrictions on in-person office work, most businesses — nearly 80% — are planning for a grad-

BUSINESS JOURNAL STAFF

ual return,” Donofrio said. “Employers continue to be focused on making sure workplaces are safe and that employees have more flexibility in how and where they work, even after in-person office work returns. They also know that expanded child care options and in-person instruction at K-12 schools is necessary for many employees to return to the physical workspace.”

While surveyed executives said they believe the vast majority of Michigan workers will be coming back to the office postCOVID-19, 93% of employers plan to offer hybrid work models to some staff, and almost a third of employers say 50% or more of employees will work in hybrid mode.

When it comes to real estate, 70% of businesses expect their real estate footprint to remain the same or increase, with 27% planning to decrease their physical space in the coming year.

Other significant survey findings include: More than 90% of the state’s business leaders expect to maintain or grow employment and capital investment during the next 6-12 months and more than 94% of business leaders anticipate the U.S. economy to remain strong and growing during

JUNE 1, 2021

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and commitment saved Rachel’s life,” said Chris Christoffersen.

“They were truly a miracle, and we will never forget them.”

To recognize the life-saving work that made their daughter’s recovery possible, the Christoffersens made a $200,000 gift to Bronson Health Foundation to establish the Christoffersen Family Trauma and Emergency Services Endowment. The fund will support new technologies and equipment, education for physicians, nurses and other clinicians, facility development and innovative models of care in trauma and emergency services across the Bronson system.

“Our family is eternally grateful,” Barbara Christoffersen added. “We received expert and loving care when a member of our family desperately needed it. We will never forget that day and the caretakers will always be in our hearts.”

The Christoffersens have seeded the endowment with more than $200,000 and would like to see the community meet or exceed that giving level. In fact, as they have invited others, the call has been met and more than $100,000 already has been raised.

“This endowment will allow us to add to the lifesaving resources we use to care for patients during the most critical time of their lives,” said Dr. Oreste Romeo, medical director for Bronson’s trauma center.

To learn more about the endowment and/or to make a gift, and to read Rachel Olsen’s (formerly Christoffersen) story in her own words, visit bronsonfoundation.com.

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